Discover Magazine - Sleep May Prepare You for Tomorrow by Dissolving Today's Neural Connections
Scientists working on fruit flies found that during sleep the proteins between many neurons were weakened and some were dissolved entirely. The proteins were considered good proxies for synaptic connections between neurons. During waking hours, the flies would form connections between neurons as they picked up new information and interacted socially. Flies with rich social environments with other flies formed more synapses than those in isolated environments. During sleep many proteins were weakened and some were eliminated. The data supports a synaptic homeostatic model of the brain that suggests that sleep scales back weak connections so that only the most salient memories remain, eliminating brain clutter and saving resources. [The conflict is that some other studies have found that during sleep connections are actually strengthened. A possible solution is that some strong synapses are strengthened, while a majority of others are lost.]
2 comments:
I wonder what happens to the synapses in fruit flies that are tested at the same time interval but were not permitted to sleep. Is it just decay over time that prunes weak connections? or are there ACTIVE processes occurring during sleep that seeks out synapses to selectively eliminate or strengthen based on how well they are formed or whatever. I've met some geneticists who work with fruit flies (drosophila) and they are very interesting. They invent really innovative and strange paradigms to test the flies and I'm certain they would figure out how to sleep deprive them if they wanted.
The scientists did restrict the sleep on some fruit flies and found that the proteins just continued to build up and weren't eliminated over the same time frame. So there does seem to be an active process at work here.
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