7 new discoveries about how we sleep

It's amazing how in 2019 still may remain unexplored possibilities of the body and especially the brain. In recent months, there were some interesting research that have provided new information about why we want to sleep more during illness, or how insomnia is associated with Alzheimer's. In this case, scientists believe that these discoveries will be more and more, and we should pay attention to the facts already known to send them to your advantage. Today Heroine edition will talk about what scientific discoveries about sleep have been made in recent years.

1. You can really learn a foreign language in a dream

7 new discoveries about how we sleep

The idea that you can learn something in a dream, is not new, but in January of this year, it ceased to be a myth. A study conducted by researchers from the University of Bern, has shown that learning new words in a dream may depend on when they are spoken.

Scientists have uttered a couple of words on the different stages of sleep, one - known German word more - meaningless. If the couple have spoken at the time of brain cells showed activity waves during deep sleep, people are easier compared the words in pairs during wakefulness. This means that our brain is able to sort words and try to understand them, even when we sleep. However, to remove the application of English is still too early to phone.

2. A small amount of sleep alters your brain cells

7 new discoveries about how we sleep

The January survey of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that stress has a direct impact on how much REM sleep lasts. They experimented on mice and noticed that a light daily stress increases the amount of REM sleep, and only after a certain magnitude affects another sleep stage. In this case, REM sleep disorders are closely associated with depression and low mood, so that stress directly affects what you dream of - positive or negative.

Researchers also found that stress affects the structure of the brain that changes itself. Some cells in the hippocampus are dying, some are growing, and this is extremely important because it is this part of the brain determines our reaction to stress and ability to cope with it.

3. If you have sleep apnea, you harder to think about the past

A condition in which breathing temporarily stops during sleep - apnea - highly prevalent among adults. New research has shown that sleep apnea also has an unexpected effect on the brain: impact on autobiographical memory.

A study published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, focused on obstructive sleep apnea, the most common type of condition in which breathing stops because the airways become too narrow for air. The researchers found that these people were hard to remember the past. They are overly generalize their childhood memories and, although they remembered the incidents and important events, it is still worse remembered details like names, or dates.

7 new discoveries about how we sleep

4. We process sounds around during sleep

It turns out that when we sleep, we still listen to the world around us, a tracking noise that can make a difference. Scientists began to analyze the electrical signals of the brain of sleeping people, when they were surrounded by various kinds of noise. During REM sleep, their brains are "flashed" whenever they heard a noise that made sense, for example, the familiar voices. Reactions to the other noise was not. When it was deep, dreamless sleep, the effect disappeared.

5. Insomnia increases the risk of Alzheimer's and the development of heart disease,

One of the staff of the Washington School of Medicine found that sleep deprivation in mice and humans increases the amount of a certain protein - tau, which is found at the clusters in the brain of people with Alzheimer's disease. The less you sleep, the more the brain accumulates this protein.

Another study conducted by the American College of Cardiology, was dedicated to a particular area of ​​human health: heart. They tracked the sleep of more than 3,000 adults and found that those who slept less than six hours per day, the probability of formation of plaque in the arteries by 27% higher than that of those who have an average of eight or nine hours of sleep.

6. We want to sleep during the illness due to a single gene

We want to sleep more during illness that is quite logical - the body so avoid over-voltage, all the forces of spending to fight the infection. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have discovered the same gene that is responsible for this desire some sleep in fruit flies.

7 new discoveries about how we sleep

The gene was named "Nemours" - which means "dream" in Japanese, and this discovery is one of the most tangible pieces of evidence that sleep and the immune system are associated. When the gene is turned Nemours remove fly longer feel the need to sleep when ill - and died.

7. The neurons during sleep work differently

The study, published in the journal Nature, showed that when we sleep, our neurons work very differently, depending on the stage of sleep and where they are in the brain. During REM sleep, the neurons of the hippocampus work "half-hearted", and the nerves in the frontal cortex are most active.

Previously, we already knew that sleep is crucial for processing of our memories. Now, however, it became clear that our brain nerve cells perform more complex work than we thought. Ultimately, this can help us understand how to actually work mechanisms, such as memory and learning during sleep.