How does getting enough sleep increase brain power and performance? Scientist told the reason

Benefits of sleep: A team of scientists has made an important discovery through which we can know how sleep increases the power of our brain. Along with this, scientists have tried to explain how much sleep is necessary for the development of the brain and body.

sleep increases performance
Much previous research has shown that sleep enhances our cognitive performance. However, the underlying neural mechanisms, particularly those associated with non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, remain largely unknown.

A new study conducted by a team of researchers from Rice University and Houston Methodist Center for Neural Systems Restoration and Weill Cornell Medical College aims to bring things to light.

brighten your mind
Research published in the journal Science shows that NREM sleep (the kind of sleep you experience when you blink, for example) stimulates the brain and enhances information encoding, leading to new cognitive processes in this stage of sleep. The insight shows researchers replicated these effects with invasive stimulation, suggesting promising possibilities for future neuro-modulation treatments in humans.

“There is a lot of activity in our brain during sleep,” said Dr. Natasha Kharas, a former researcher in Dragoi’s lab and a neurological surgery resident at Weill Cornell. “This helps a lot in relaxing the brain and gaining energy.”

However, neuronal activity after sleep became more inconsistent than before sleep, allowing neurons to fire more freely. These changes improved accuracy in information processing and performance on visual tasks.

What was the result?
The findings showed that sleep improved the animals’ performance in the visual task as well as their accuracy in recognizing moving images. Importantly, this improvement only occurred in people who actually slept. The performance of those who did not sleep remained unchanged.

“This discovery is very important, because it suggests that some of the beneficial effects of sleep, such as brain repair and performance improvement, are real,” said Valentin Dragoi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University. Can be achieved even without sleep.” ,