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We all know sleep is important. But I confess over the years, and particularly in my youth, I underestimated its health and cognitive benefits. Many of you probably did too!
When we look at the neuroscience of sleep we can see that it is more than critical to brain health: learning and brain growth happens mostly during sleep, as does detoxification. In fact it is important for just about everything you do and every function in the brain.
But there is still much to learn. We know that deep sleep is where most recovery happens and where brain growth and therefore learning is at its highest. We know that rapid eye movement sleep (REM), that light sleep where you can see the eyes twitching of sleeper, is important for emotional consolidation.
A new piece of research, out of Tsukuba University in Japan, has found another critical aspect of REM sleep.
This group of researchers imaged the brain of mice during sleep and were able to see increased red blood cell flow through capillaries, only during REM sleep. So this…
