NREM) Sleep-related mechanisms remain largely unexplored.
A new study conducted by a team of researchers from Rice University and Houston Methodist Center for Neural Systems Restoration and Weill Cornell Medical College aimed to uncover this phenomenon. Published in the journal Science, the research revealed how
NREM Sleep – for example the light sleep experienced while napping – promotes brain coordination and enhances information encoding, shedding new light on this sleep state.
The researchers replicated these effects through invasive stimulation, suggesting promising prospects for future neuro-modulation treatments in humans. The implications of this discovery potentially lead to innovative treatments for sleep disorders and even cognitive and pave the way for ways to enhance behavioral performance. “During sleep, we have low-frequency observed an increase in delta wave activity and synchronized firing between neurons in different cortical areas.”
“However, after sleep, neuronal activity became more inconsistent than before sleep, allowing neurons to fire more independently. This change led to better accuracy in information processing and performance in visual tasks,” Kharas said. The findings demonstrated that sleep improved the animals' performance in the visual task with increased accuracy in recognizing rotated images. Importantly, this improvement was unique to those who actually slept – macaques who experienced calm awakening without sleeping did not see the same performance increase. “This finding is important because it suggests that some of the restorative and performance-enhancing effects of sleep can be achieved without the need for actual sleep,” said Valentin Dragoi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice.
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