If you have moments when your mind is missing, forget if you locked the door, or pour juice over cereal instead of milk, consider these moments are happening due to the fact that the brain sometimes takes a nap.
American scientists have discovered that many individual brain cells “slumber” when we are tired, even if the rest of the encephalon is active, writes the British newspaper “The Daily Telegraph”. Researchers disclose that this finding could explain why we are so oddball sometimes, or why we often make stupid mistakes.
They also blame the brain cells that take a nap for the situations when we go look for something, but, when we get to the that place, we can not remember why we are there. The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), which has investigated whether the sleep of brain cells affects concentration and dexterity in active people. The research revealed that small regions of the brain are sleepy when we are tired, and the more we struggle to continue our work, the more increases the number of brain cells that “snooze”.
“This is happening, however, to a small number of cells. For example, I watched 20 neurons, and of these, 18 had permanently remained active”, explains Dr. Chiara Cirelli. For the two “sleepy” neurons, active periods have alternated with the inactive ones. However, scientists warn about dangers as sleeping behind the wheel or ineffectiveness of some activities when we are tired. “Even before we feel exhausted, there are signs in the brain that tell us that we should stop some activities that could become dangerous”, they added.