How does getting plenty of sleep increase brain strength? Scientist explains why

To live a healthy life, 7 to 8 hours of sleep should be taken daily, it not only gives us a feeling of relief, but is also very important for the health of the brain.

Benefits Of Sleep: A team of scientists has made an important discovery so that we will know how sleep increases the strength of our brain. Along with this, scientists have tried to explain how important sleep is for the development of mind and body.

In many previous research, it has been revealed that sleep works to increase our cognitive performance. However, underlying neural mechanisms, particularly non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep mechanisms, have largely gone unnoticed.

A new study by a team of researchers from Rice University and Houston Methodist's Center for Neural Systems Restoration and Weill Cornell Medical College aimed to bring this to the fore.

Sharpen the mind

The research, published in the journal Science, states that NREM sleep (for example, light sleep felt after napping) works to speed up the brain and increase information encoding, which brings out new things at this sleep stage. The researchers replicated these effects through invasive stimulation, suggesting promising prospects for future neuromodulation therapies in humans

Dr. Natasha Kharas, former researcher at Dragoi's lab and resident of neurological surgery at Weill Cornell, said, "During sleep, there are many types of activity in our brain. Many of these help the brain to rest and regain energy.

However, neuronal activity after sleep became more incompatible than before sleep, allowing neurons to activate more independently. Due to this change, accuracy in information processing and performance of visual tasks improved.

What was the result?

The findings showed that sleep improved the animals' performance in visual tasks as well as improved accuracy in recognizing moving pictures. Importantly, this improvement was only in people who actually fell asleep. At the same time, the performance of those who did not sleep was the same.

"This discovery is important because it suggests that some of the beneficial effects of sleep, such as brain repair and performance improvement, can be achieved without actual sleep," said Valentin Dragoi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University.