The sleep of the night allows us to free ourselves from useless memories.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerousSleep e memories: get rid of unnecessary thoughts and useless memories with a nice nap. What the British call "smart forgettingIs the good trick for forget without too much trauma and in an intelligent way what is useless and thus optimizing the energy consumption of the brain.
A conclusion reached by the researchers of the University of Wisconsin, who, in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Marche, in a new study confirmed the role of sleep in the learning process, arguing that the useless memories accumulated in the memory lose a lot during sleep for leave room for new experiences.
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In practice, during the day the contact points between neurons, the so-called synapses, are strengthened thanks to stimuli that increase their number and volume: if we have new experiences, memories accumulate continuously. A real mess which, however, finds a solution during the night: the synapses are thinning by about 20%, unnecessary memories are eliminated and space is created for the memories of the new day. That's why sleeping is good for you! Not only does it eliminate anxiety, but it also allows us to have a "plastic" brain that is able to learn new things every day.
THE STUDY - To measure changes in synapse size between sleep and wakefulness, the researchers used a 3D electron microscope and, by analyzing two areas of the cerebral cortex, they saw that a sleep of 6-8 hours was able to thin the size of the synapses by 18%, in both areas analyzed and in proportion to the size of the connections.
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"According to these hypotheses - explain the authors of the study - the interaction with the environment during wakefulness determines a progressive strengthening of the synapses, because we continually learn new things even without realizing it, while sleep on the contrary serves to weaken them, to make them return to more sustainable energy levels and to allow us to learn more new things the next day. Thanks to this study, we were able for the first time to obtain visual proof of this phenomenon ".
This is a process that would spare the largest synapses, which most likely coincide with the more stable memories. As if to say: a good restorative sleep frees the mind from the superfluous and provides us with the right energy to start a new day.
Germana Carillo
