‘Artificial Nap’ can provide sleep benefits without sleep
Discriminating the brain of monkeys with electricity promotes a performance
What if we really get the memory, learning and perception of “power nap” without sleeping?
A recent study In Science It is suggested that at least some of our primet cousins can. Researchers showed that a brief nap (rapid eye movement, or ram, without sleep) improved Makak’s performance on a visual-concept work. Scientists then reproduced this promotion by stimulating the minds of awakened monkeys, which mimicked the activity of the sleeping brain – inspired a kind of “artificial nap”. The process, if effective is effective in humans, one day can help promote cognition and treat sleep disorders.
The team first evaluated the image orients trained five monkeys on a task and tested them twice, with a gap of 30 minutes, in which they were either non-REM sleep or only rest. The monkeys who slept performed much better in the second Test. Researchers recorded activity of thousands of neurons in three brain regions: two visual areas and a decision making. In golden monkeys between tests, this activity, strangely, was less synchronized during the second task than before.
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“Sleep is a synchronizing phenomenon in which neurons go up and down together,” says the senior writer Valentin Dragoi, a system neuroscientist at Rice University, but the levels of synchronous decrease than before. ” “It’s amazing.” This “decocronizing” effect increases the size of this “decoction”, suggests that firing can independently run neurons improvement.
Low-existent “delta” brain waves are known to involve memory maintenance. These waves dominated the monkeys’ sleep brain activity, and the team wondered if they were behind the promotion of performance. To test this, the researchers re-used- but instead of giving gold to the monkeys, they stimulated a visual brain area using a low-frequency electrical signal that mimics delta waves. This stimulation also reduced both nerve -interaction and better performance.
These findings mean that the excitement of the brain can give some benefits of nap without sleep. The results in primates strongly suggest that the “artificial nap” effects will translate humans, the whole of mednic, a neurocystist of the University of California, Irwin, who study the relationship between naping and performance; Evidence already exists that electrical stimulation during sleep can benefit the memory of humans. “This task indicates that the delta can mimic the benefits of stimulant (when waking) at the frequency,” called Medic.
Researchers used electrodes laid in the brain of monkeys for excitement, but they say “in the near future,” in people with sleep disorders, “Droogie says, they plan to test non -comprehensive techniques. They also plan to study other senses, cognitive functions and brain areas, they say. “Are different fields the most effective for particular tasks? Nobody knows.”
