Neuroscience says this is what really happens to your brain when you don’t get enough sleep

Don’t sleep on sleep. It’s part of what makes everything else possible.

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I’m so tired. However, the reasons are good: 

Lots of time with family and friends 

Still, sometimes sleep suffers. I’m well-aware of what the research says that can entail—health risks and effects on productivity and memory. The idea is that sleep is when the brain has a chance to “clean” itself at night. 

A recent study in Nature Neuroscience takes a more precise look at something many people have experienced: those brief, frustrating moments after a bad night’s sleep when you simply can’t focus. 

Instead of looking at sleep deprivation over years or even days, the researchers focused on what’s happening inside the brain at the moment attention slips. 

The scope of the study 

Researchers at MIT and Boston University recruited 26 healthy adults between the ages of 19 and 40. 

Each participant went through the same testing protocol twice: once after a full night of sleep and once after staying awake all night under supervision. 

During both sessions, the researchers tracked what was happening in real time using several methods at once: 

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