Biologists Reveal How Sleep Deprivation Harms Memory

A study in mice has, for the first time, shown that five hours of sleep deprivation leads to a loss of connectivity between neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with learning and memory. The study is to be published in the journal eLife.

The researchers examined the impact of brief periods of sleep loss on the structure of dendrites, the branching extensions of nerve cells along which impulses are received from other synaptic cells, in the mouse brain.

They first used the Golgi silver-staining method, which allows visualization of brain tissue, to measure the length of dendrites and number of dendritic spines in the mouse hippocampus following five hours of sleep deprivation, a period of sleep loss that is known to impair memory consolidation. Their analyses indicated that sleep deprivation significantly reduced the length and spine density of the dendrites belonging to the neurons in the CA1 region of the hippocampus.

“Lack of sleep is a common problem in our 24/7 modern society,” says Ted Abel, Brush Family Professor of Biology and senior author of the study, “and it has severe consequences for health, overall well-being and brain function."

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