Your brain may not wait for bedtime to catch up on sleep

If you’ve neglected getting enough sleep for your busy schedule, your brain may have other plans during your awake periods.    A recent study has shown that sleep-deprived parts of the brain may ‘snooze’ while we’re in an awake state. 

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin conducted a study in which they wired rats to an electroencephalography (EEG) machine to examine the rats’ brain activity after they had been sleep deprived.  The recorded brain activity showed patterns of activity and inactivity consistent with the brain’s electrical patterns that are exhibited during deep sleep.

How can our brains ‘sleep’ while we’re awake?  The answer is a term called ‘local sleep.’  Small clusters of neurons in the brain go ‘offline’ for short periods while other areas of the brain exhibit standard waking activity.  During sleep, the brains’ pattern of activity and inactivity is synchronized, but during ‘local sleep’ these patterns are brief and disjointed.  This half-awake state correlated with a decline in motor function when the rats were prompted to perform a simple task, suggesting that our cognitive ability and motor functions are compromised with sleep deprivation.