14 DAY TRIAL // The human brain is, indeed, a perfect construction, researchers have recently said, after the results of a new study detailing the changes that go on in our synapses while we sleep have been published. It would appear that sleep, other than being comforting for the mind and for the body, also helps our brain function better than it would if we were to stay up for several days. Synapses have the most to gain from us resting, because they increase their size and processing abilities throughout the day, in order to handle the large volume of information we collect from our environment.
However, if the process were continuous, then there would be a very good chance for at least some of these inter-neural connections to fail. As such, the brain takes the “opportunity” of sleep to diminish the flow of data through synapses, allowing them to reduce their volume and become prepared for another day of heavy processing. It's important for them to remain in check, because they would otherwise end up consuming a lot of power and working ineffectively for even the most basic tasks, a behavior that is very similar to that of electrical circuits, in some conditions.
“We know that sleep is necessary for our brain to function properly, to learn new things every day, and also, in some cases, to consolidate the memory of what we learned during the day. During sleep, we think that most, if not all, synapses are downscaled: at the end of sleep, the strongest synapses shrink, while the weakest synapses may even disappear,” Associate Professor of psychiatry Chiara Cirelli, a researcher working with the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, explains.
“Much of what we learn in a day, we don't really need to remember. If you've used up all the space, you can't learn more before you clean out the junk that is filling up your brain,” she adds. Together with her team, Cirelli has found that sleep allows for the downscaling of synapses and also clears the brain of all the unnecessary “noises” it records during the day. That's not to say that it erases memories, but simply bits of information that will never be relevant again.