I still get amused by people
who think sleep is a state of
nothingness. Or that it’s a time when the body takes a much needed
time-out. On some level, it’s true that sleep is a break from busy wakefulness
for the body’s renewal
processes, but there’s a lot going on up in the brain to make sleep far
from a state of inactivity.
And there’s also a reason why youngsters sleep so much that has everything to do with development and high activity. In a recent study presented by the University of Pennsylvania, researchers reported on the value of sleep during early life when the brain is rapidly maturing and highly changeable:
- Sleeping brains
don’t “rest”: several cellular
changes take place in the sleeping brain as certain neural networks spring into action and reorganize to take on
important chores left for the sleeping human.
- Sleep turns on a
switch: as soon as your body is asleep, everything is turned on that’s
necessary for making synaptic changes
in the brain related to memory
creation and consolidation.
Sleep has long been associated with memory. But this latest
study is a good reminder of how active and “alive” the sleeping
brain is, and how critical sleep is for both young and old.
So the next time someone
challenges you to explain how sleep and action can coexist (or why “active
sleep” isn’t an oxymoron), you can tell them that sleep provides the brain the
perfect opportunity to check off a “to-do list” while the rest of you, well,
sleeps. And keeping your memory
faculties up to date and ready for the next day is perhaps at the top of
that list.
Sweet Dreams,
Michael J. Breus, PhD
The Sleep Doctor™
www.thesleepdoctor.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thesleepdoctor
Click here to order Dr. Breus's book, Beauty Sleep, on Amazon or Kindle, or here to buy it for the Barnes & Noble Nook.
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