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Scientists May Have Found a Way to Mimic Sleep in the Brain Without Actually Sleeping. Here’s How.

Researchers recreated a deep-sleep brain rhythm in awake mice, giving them some memory benefits usually linked to actual rest.

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Sleep is great, but you know what’s even better? Not sleeping. Sometimes it feels like a glaring design flaw that we have to power down for six to nine hours a day just to keep the brain from frying. Now, according to a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists may have found a way to give us all the benefits of sleep without actually going to sleep.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used optogenetics, a technique that controls genetically modified brain cells with pulses of light, to recreate the brain rhythm of deep sleep in mice that were fully awake and moving.

As we are in deep sleep, our neurons fire in slow, synchronized........

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