中美合作研究:"睡眠好"可助学习和记忆的原理被发现

昨日BBC News报道了发表在Science的最新文章，揭示了好的睡眠可帮助学习和记忆的原理: 睡眠是大脑形成大量新的神经元突触（Synapse）的宝贵时间。突触是两个神经元间的联络通道。新突触的形成对学习和记忆非常关键。研究还发现：用熬夜为代价强化训练学习是得不偿失的， 因为学的赶不上丧失。

全文: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27695144
 

Sleep's memory role discovered

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

The mechanism by which a good night's sleep improves learning and memory has been discovered by scientists.

 

The team in China and the US used advanced microscopy to witness new connections between brain cells - synapses - forming during sleep.

Their study, published in the journal Science, showed even intense training could not make up for lost sleep.

Experts said it was an elegant and significant study, which uncovered the mechanisms of memory.

It is well known that sleep plays an important role in memory and learning. But what actually happens inside the brain has been a source of considerable debate.

Researchers at New York University School of Medicine and Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School trained mice in a new skill - walking on top of a rotating rod.

They then looked inside the living brain with a microscope to see what happened when the animals were either sleeping or sleep deprived.

Their study showed that sleeping mice formed significantly more new connections between neurons - they were learning more.

A connection between two brain cells

And by disrupting specific phases of sleep, the research group showed deep or slow-wave sleep was necessary for memory formation.

During this stage, the brain was "replaying" the activity from earlier in the day.

Prof Wen-Biao Gan, from New York University, told the BBC: "Finding out sleep promotes new connections between neurons is new, nobody knew this before.

"We thought sleep helped, but it could have been other causes, and we show it really helps to make connections and that in sleep the brain is not quiet, it is replaying what happened during the day and it seems quite important for making the connections."

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充足的睡眠很重要。睡眠不足的危害有you:

These include:

• cancer
• heart disease
• type-2 diabetes
• infections
• obesity

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12月份发表的与神经元和突触有关的一项研究: 抑郁症时大脑记忆的关键部位海马体发生改变，令神经元和突触更新减缓。同时抑郁带来的严重失眠进一步恶化了状况，使得学习认知和记忆能力下降。

Hippocampal volume loss in depression reflects glial loss

Date:

December 17, 2013

Source:

Elsevier

Summary:

 Depression has been associated with reduced volume of the hippocampus in magnetic resonance imaging studies in humans. A new study now clarifies the cellular basis of these volumetric changes, which have been unclear until now. Beginning in the 1980s, a series of studies in rodents suggested that an area of the hippocampus, a brain region implicated in mood and memory, was particularly vulnerable to stress. When analyzing the brain tissue in detail, they reported loss of nerve cells called neurons with stress.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131217085219.htm