A New Study Suggests A Lack of Sleep Makes Your Brain Eat Itself
June 1, 2017
by Robby Berman
Weird, shape-shifting glial cells are your brain’s caretakers. They’re the first responders in the event of a head injury, and — having colonized every nook and cranny of the place while you were still in the womb — they’re your cranial custodians. These tentacled helpers clear out the junk and are vital to keeping your brain smoothly humming along. But now a new study has discovered something startling about them: they eat healthy brain cells in mice who don’t get enough shut-eye. And maybe in us, too.
The study, by Michele Bellesi, Luisa De Vivo, Mattia Chini, and Chiara Chirelli, looked at two kinds of glial cells in mice:
http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/a-new-study-suggests-a-lack-of-sleep-makes-your-brain-eat-itself
