{"id":239929,"date":"2026-06-29T14:28:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/what-one-sleepless-night-does-to-brain-connections-and-why-sleep-may-reset-them"},"modified":"2026-06-29T14:28:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:28:45","slug":"what-one-sleepless-night-does-to-brain-connections-and-why-sleep-may-reset-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/what-one-sleepless-night-does-to-brain-connections-and-why-sleep-may-reset-them","title":{"rendered":"What one sleepless night does to brain connections and why sleep may reset them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/what-one-sleepless-night-does-to-brain-connections-and-why-sleep-may-reset-them.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A night without sleep produced increased markers of connections between brain cells, showing that sleep in humans may be important for restoring cellular balance in the brain, according to a study published in PLOS Biology by David Elmenhorst from the Forschungszentrum J\u00fclich Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long wondered why humans and other animals need to sleep. One potential mechanism is that sleep is required to restore synaptic connections and homeostasis in the brain. Synapses\u2014the connections between brain cells\u2014become stronger during wakefulness.<\/p>\n<p>This increases the amount of energy the brain needs and leads to a buildup of proteins in the brain. Sleep is thought to reset these levels, reducing synaptic connections and restoring homeostasis, but evidence has thus far been limited to animal models.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A night without sleep produced increased markers of connections between brain cells, showing that sleep in humans may be important for restoring cellular balance in the brain, according to a study published in PLOS Biology by David Elmenhorst from the Forschungszentrum J\u00fclich Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and colleagues. Scientists have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239929","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=239929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}