When people don't get enough sleep, certain brain cells literally slow down.
A study that recorded directly from neurons in the brains of 12 people found that sleep deprivation causes the bursts of electrical activity that brain cells use to communicate to become slower and weaker, a team reports online Monday in Nature Medicine.
The finding could help explain why a lack of sleep impairs a range of mental functions, says Dr. Itzhak Fried, an author of the study and a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles.
[For more on this story by JON HAMILTON, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...sluggish-as-you-feel]
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