There is nothing like the feeling of waking up refreshed after a good night’s sleep, and perhaps you even feel awake enough to skip your morning coffee. But what neurological processes occurred while you were sleeping, and what might happen if these processes were  disrupted? Given the variety of sleep-related disorders and irregular sleep patterns that often result from stress, the biology of sleep is a public health topic that demands better understanding.

Recently, a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh set out to study what happens to the composition of neurons, the cells that make up the brain, when mice are sleep deprived. They compared the brains of mice that had been allowed to sleep normally to those that had been forced to stay continually awake. Researchers found that while the amount and density of neurons were the same between the groups, the sleep deprived mice had different types of neurons in the hippocampus and cortex, areas of the brain that are involved in functions such as memory, learning, and emotion. This unique composition of neurons found in the sleep deprived mice is remarkably similar to what is often found in studies on aging and some genetic diseases. Digging deeper into understanding these phenomena is the first step to advances in healthcare to treat neurological aging and disorders. 

This study concludes that sleep plays a vital role in maintaining the architecture of the brain and its normal function, though more research will be needed to understand the specific outcomes of these changes and how the findings might translate to humans. Though the brain is an incredibly complex organ, studies such as this one use the tools of modern science to successfully answer fundamental questions about neurobiology.  

This study was led by Dimitra Koukaroudi with corresponding author Seth G.N. Grant at the University of Edinburgh.

Managing Correspondent: Olivia Lavidor

Press Article: Sleep deprivation in mice found to reduce brain synapse diversity (Medical Xpress)

Original Journal Article: Sleep maintains excitatory synapse diversity in the cortex and hippocampus (Current Biology)

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