Lack of focus when sleep-deprived may be brain’s way of clearing waste: Study

Attention lapses due to sleepdeprivation could be because the brain is trying to catch up with waste cleansing which typically happens while sleeping during the day a new study has suggestedThe cerebrospinal fluid which flows into and around the brain and spinal cord cushions the central nervous system from shocks helps remove waste from the brain that was built during the day through flushing It is considered important for maintaining brain health and functionIf you dont sleep the cerebrospinal fluid waves start to intrude into wakefulness where normally you wouldnt see them However they come with an attentional tradeoff where attention fails during the moments that you have this wave of fluid flow said Laura Lewis associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and senior author of the study published in the journal Nature NeuroscienceSleep is critical for normal daily functioning with deprivation known to cause an impaired cognitive function such as in remembering and paying attention among other deficits Problems in the brains waste clearance has been suggested in previous studies to lead to dementiaThe study tested 26 participants for their ability to pay attention once following a night of sleep deprivation in the lab and once when they were wellrested in a visual and an auditory taskFor the visual task the participants were asked to press a button when a cross on a screen in front of them would change to a square For the auditory one they were asked to do the same when they heard a beepRecordings of brain activity using an electroencephalogram and functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI scanner revealed that sleepdeprived participants performed worse compared to the wellrested onesTime taken to respond to changes in visuals and audio was more and in some cases the participants did not register the change an attention lapse the researchers saidAmong the physiological changes seen during an attention lapse the researchers noted that the cerebrospinal fluid flowed out of the brain during the lapses and flowed back in after each lapseThe result suggests that at the moment that attention fails this fluid is actually being expelled outward away from the brain And when attention recovers its drawn back in said LewisThe researchers proposed that when the brain is sleepdeprived it begins to compensate for the loss in cleansing that normally occurs during sleep possibly at the cost of attentionOne way to think about those events is because your brain is so in need of sleep it tries its best to enter into a sleeplike state to restore some cognitive functions lead author Zinong Yang a postdoctoral associate at MIT saidA reduced breathing and heart rate and narrowing of pupils were among the other physiological changes related with an attention lapse pointing to how effects of sleepdeprivation are bodywide the researchers saidThey demonstrate that attentional failures during wakefulness after sleep deprivation are tightly orchestrated in a series of brainbody changes including neuronal shifts pupil constriction and cerebrospinal fluid CSF flow pulsations pointing to a coupled system of fluid dynamics and neuromodulatory stateThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever