Sweet dreams…

[S]leep deprivation impairs spatial learning — including remembering how to get to a new destination. And now scientists are beginning to understand how that happens: Learning spatial tasks increases the production of new cells in an area of the brain involved with spatial memory called the hippocampus. Sleep plays a part in helping those new brain cells survive.

Learning new things, at least in the case of spatial memory, quite literally keeps your brain young by ensuring a better survival rate for new brain cells in the hippocampus. However, not getting enough sleep eliminates the potential benefit of new learning on the hippocampus by suppressing neurogenesis. “Mild, chronic sleep restriction may have long-term deleterious effects on neural functioning,” according to the paper.

[...]

[Post to Twitter]