While it’s well known that sleep enhances cognitive performance, the underlying neural mechanisms, particularly those related to nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, remain largely unexplored. A new study by a team of researchers at Rice University and Houston Methodist’s Center for Neural Systems Restoration and Weill Cornell Medical College, coordinated by Rice’s Valentin Dragoi, has nonetheless uncovered a key mechanism by which sleep enhances neuronal and behavioral performance, potentially changing our fundamental understanding of how sleep boosts brainpower.
The research, published in Science, reveals how NREM sleep—the lighter sleep one experiences when taking a nap, for example—fosters brain synchronization and enhances information encoding, shedding new light on this sleep stage. The researchers replicated these effects through invasive stimulation, suggesting promising possibilities for future neuromodulation therapies in humans. The implications of this discovery potentially pave the way for innovative treatments for sleep disorders and even methods to enhance cognitive and behavioral performance.
The investigation involved an examination of the neural activity in multiple brain areas in macaques while the animals performed a visual discrimination task before and after a 30-minute period of NREM sleep. Using multielectrode arrays, the researchers recorded the activity of thousands of neurons across three brain areas: the primary and midlevel visual cortices and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which are associated with visual processing and executive functions. To confirm that the macaques were in NREM sleep, researchers used polysomnography to monitor their brain and muscle activity alongside video analysis to ensure their eyes were closed and their bodies relaxed.
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