{"id":193282,"date":"2024-07-21T22:22:53","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T03:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/our-brains-take-naps-while-were-awake-and-wake-when-were-asleep"},"modified":"2024-07-21T22:22:53","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T03:22:53","slug":"our-brains-take-naps-while-were-awake-and-wake-when-were-asleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/our-brains-take-naps-while-were-awake-and-wake-when-were-asleep","title":{"rendered":"Our brains take naps while we\u2019re awake \u2014 and wake when we\u2019re asleep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/our-brains-take-naps-while-were-awake-and-wake-when-were-asleep.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the first time, scientists have discovered that a small region of our brain shuts down to take microsecond-long naps while we\u2019re awake. What\u2019s more, these same areas \u2018flicker\u2019 awake while we\u2019re asleep. These new findings could offer pivotal insights into neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, which are linked to sleep dysregulation.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists from Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) and the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) made these findings by accident, noticing how brain waves in one tiny area of the brain shut down suddenly for just milliseconds when we\u2019re awake. And in this same region, those brain waves jolt suddenly, for the same amount of time, when we\u2019re asleep.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith powerful tools and new computational methods, there\u2019s so much to be gained by challenging our most basic assumptions and revisiting the question of \u2018what is a state?\u2019\u201d said Keith Hengen, Assistant Professor of Biology at WashU. \u201cSleep or wake is the single greatest determinant of your behavior, and then everything else falls out from there. So if we don\u2019t understand what sleep and wake actually are, it seems like we\u2019ve missed the boat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time, scientists have discovered that a small region of our brain shuts down to take microsecond-long naps while we\u2019re awake. What\u2019s more, these same areas \u2018flicker\u2019 awake while we\u2019re asleep. These new findings could offer pivotal insights into neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, which are linked to sleep dysregulation. Scientists from Washington University [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}