"Lack of sleep causes the brain to eat itself?"
An infograph has been seen in different groups for some time. Where it is said "Lack of sleep cause the brain eat itself"
Translating it into Bengali means that the brain can eat on its own due to lack of adequate sleep! Surely you are shocked to hear that? How is this possible again! A group of scientists has claimed that this is possible. Michele Bellesi, Luisa de Vivo, Mattia Chini, Francesca Gilli, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli.
These 7 scientists published their research paper on May 24, 2016 in The Journal of Neuroscience. I'm going to explain a little bit about the results of research on rats and how they get it.
We all know that there are four types of glial cells in our brain that support innumerable neurons, synapses and neurons, right? The third image below shows these four types of glial cells.
Every day millions of cells are dying in our body and millions of cells are being made. Dead cells are called debris. Again we know that our body has thousands of reactions in metabolism every day. These reactions produce some by-products. Such as adenosine is made in the brain. By-products can catch a kind of garbage. So these are the debris and by-products made in the brain, they have to be removed, right? This is done by a type of glial cell called Astrocytes. Their job is to refresh the brain by washing and cleaning the debris and by-products from the brain. The process by which this works is called phagocytosis of astrocytes. This work is done when we sleep.
Now at the beginning of the post I mentioned the names of some scientists, now let's talk about their experiments. They studied three types of rats.
• The rat that slept for 8 hours or more.
The rat that slept for about 5 hours.
That rat did not sleep for 5 days.
It was found that the amount of Astrocytes in the brain of a rat who did not sleep for 5 days was 13.5 percent whereas the amount of Astrocytes in the brain of a rat who slept for 8 hours a day was only 6 percent.
Now if there are more Astrocytes, what do you think is the question of harm? If there are more astrocytes, there will be more phagocytosis. As a result, he will cut off a lot of synapses (connection of one neuron to another neuron) from the brain. The brain's own astrocyte cell is said to eat the brain's synapse.
Now those who sleep less will have more of this problem, even the research team said that Alzheimer's disease can also occur.
I hope I have understood the matter. In the end, the question is whether the test on rats will work in humans? Yes, it will work. Because rats and mammals. Moreover, the human brain is very similar to the brain of rats. Rats also have neurons and astrocytes in their brains, just like humans.
Wonderful article dear