Every night, when you are in the country of dreams, a major cleansing work is under your skull.

Special immune cells cleanse the brain by removing waste substances and wasting unnecessary connections when you sleep. But if you do not get your sleep it will be wrong in the cleaning work. It has Italian researchers just discovered.

Mice were kept awake for five days

In particular, two cell types are important for the brain to be able to perform a nightly cleansing: Astrocytes seal old connections in the brain while microglial cells vacuum old and dead cells on waste materials.

The researchers, among other things, examined the brains of three groups of mice. The first group was allowed to sleep for as long as they wanted. The other group was kept awake for eight hours to imitate what happens when our sleep disappears for a certain period. The third group was subjected to chronic sleep deprivation and deprived of its sleep for five days.

Sleep deficiency leads to dementia

Both types of remediation cells responded to sleep deprivation. In the rested mice, astrocytes, which seal old connections, were active in six percent of the brain's synapses - the points where the brain cells meet.

Mice that lost some of their sleep had active astrocytes in eight percent of the synapses, while chronic sleep deprivation resulted in the cells cleaning up in 13.5 percent of the synapses.

Worst concern was, however, that the mice exposed to chronic sleep insufficiency had more active microgial cells - and for a long time, researchers have linked them to a variety of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's disease.

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