{"id":3172,"date":"2025-01-17T17:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T17:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=3172"},"modified":"2025-01-17T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T17:09:15","slug":"sleep-watch-this-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=3172","title":{"rendered":"Sleep: Watch This Space"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By MIKE MAGEE<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019ve missed it, sleep is all the rage in neurosciences these days. They are fast at work rebranding it\u00a0\u201cthe brain\u2019s rinse cycle.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 The brain, protectively encased in an unyielding bony casing, lacks the delicate lymphatic system that transports used body metabolites to breakdown and extraction sites in all other parts of the body.<\/p>\n

But in 2012, neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard, identified\u00a0a unique network\u00a0<\/a>of delicate channels (\u201ctiny passages alongside blood vessels\u201d) inside the brain that collect and discharge brain metabolites and waste materials\u00a0including amyloid.<\/a>\u00a0This system, or\u00a0\u201cultimate brainwasher\u201d<\/a>\u00a0as some labeled it, was formally titled the\u00a0\u201cglymphatic system.<\/em><\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

That same study also suggested that flow through the\u00a0glymphatic system<\/em>\u00a0is\u00a0enhanced during portions of the sleep cycle<\/a>. Now 12 years after the original research, the same team, in a study in mice published in the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>\u00a0USA journal, found that regular contractions or oscillations of tiny blood vessels in the brain, stimulated by adrenaline cousin,\u00a0norepinephrine<\/em>, generated the brain scrubbing liquid flow through the channel system. The focal contractions, normally occurring ever 50 seconds, speed up the pump to every 10 seconds, in sync with peaks of norepinephrine release during sleep.<\/p>\n

Sleep deprivation appears to not only interrupt this cycle, and allow harmful wastes to accumulate, but also disrupts other mental health functions that scientists are just beginning to understand. For example,\u00a0researchers in 2021<\/a>\u00a0established that \u201csleep deprivation impairs people\u2019s ability to suppress unwanted thoughts.\u201d They were able to identify a special location on the brain cortex responsible for storing away memories, and\u00a0 suppressing and delaying their future retrieval. They further demonstrated enhanced activity at the site during REM sleep. As the\u00a0lead investigator\u00a0<\/a>noted, \u201cThat\u2019s interesting because many disorders associated with debilitating intrusive thoughts, such as depression and PTSD, are also associated with disturbances in REM.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0new work\u00a0<\/a>may help explain destructive recycling of historic conflicts among and between Silicon Valley AI uber-competitors. They may not be getting enough sleep, recycling historic grudges and grievances.<\/p>\n

As the sleep scientists reported in the\u00a0December, 2024 publication<\/a>, \u201cThe functional impairments arising from sleep deprivation are linked to a behavioral deficit in the ability to downregulate unwanted memories, and coincide with a deterioration of deliberate patterns of self-generated thought. We conclude that sleep deprivation gives rise to intrusive memories via the disruption of neural circuits governing mnemonic inhibitory control, which may rely on REM sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America\u2019s Medical Industrial Complex.<\/a> (Grove\/2020)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MIKE MAGEE In case you\u2019ve missed it, sleep is all the rage in neurosciences these days. They are fast at work rebranding it\u00a0\u201cthe brain\u2019s rinse cycle.\u201d\u00a0 The brain, protectively encased in an unyielding bony casing, lacks the delicate lymphatic system that transports used body metabolites to breakdown and extraction sites in all other parts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}