“Amazing” scientific revelation: What happens to the brain when you don’t sleep at night?
An American research team has discovered the reason behind the lack of concentration during daytime hours in cases of insomnia at night or not getting enough sleep.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that “if you don’t sleep well at night, the brain switches during the day to a waste-cleaning pattern that it usually does at night.”
They attributed the lack of focus to “sudden movement in brain fluids ,” a vital process that usually occurs during deep sleep.
Scientists say that cerebrospinal fluid “helps to clear away waste products resulting from brain activities during daylight hours.”
The study, published in the scientific journal “Nature Neuroscience,” stated that “during sleep, the brain’s cleaning system operates without interfering with thinking activities , but when a person does not get enough sleep, the brain tries to activate this function during the waking period, which affects concentration efficiency.”
The experiment included 26 volunteers who underwent concentration tests and magnetic resonance imaging twice, once after getting plenty of sleep, and again after being deprived of sleep during the night.
It turned out that the volunteers’ response to visual and auditory cues was faster when they slept well, and that the response speed was slower in cases of lack of sleep, to the point that the volunteers missed some cues during the experiment.
“When you’re not asleep, the waves of cerebrospinal fluid begin to conflict with the feeling of wakefulness,” says Laura Lewis, an assistant professor at MIT.
She added, in statements reported by the medical research website “HealthDay,” that ” attention weakens during the moments when waves of cerebrospinal fluid are flowing.”
