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An international study led by researchers from the University of Aarhus revealed for the first time brain patterns and large-scale networks that control sleep, bringing knowledge that could in the future help a large part of people struggling with sleep problems.
We spend about a third of our lives sleeping and our sleep has fascinated researchers for many years. Research conducted by the Center for Brain Music at Aarhus University and Oxford University has now revealed, with unprecedented details, the patterns and networks used by the brain during sleep. The researchers used a technique called functional MRI as well as algorithms to identify models of brain activity.
"This provides a new and potentially revolutionary understanding of brain activity during sleep, which can lead to new forms of treating sleep problems that affect far too many people," says Postdoc at the Music Center in the US. Brains from Aarhus University, Angus Stevner, who is behind the study.
The results have just been published in Nature Communications.
"Our findings may change the way we understand sleep and, most importantly, sleep disorders such as insomnia." We hope to be able to use this new detailed sleep categorization to identify changes in the brain activity of sleep. people with certain sleep disorders, such as insomnia, which we currently can not explain, "says Angus Stevner.
Can help with sleep problems
Sleep has traditionally been divided into four stages that all produce different brain waves due to the electrical activity of the brain, ranging from light sleep (the first stage) to deep sleep, to REM sleep (movement). fast eyepiece), and vice versa.
"This way of dividing sleep into stages is really based on historical conventions, many of which date back to the 1930s. We have developed a more precise and detailed description of sleep as a larger number of brain networks that modify their modes of communication. and dynamic characteristics during sleep, "explains Angus Stevner.
Nearly half of the Danish population has sleep problems. The researchers hope that a more complete and detailed representation of how brain networks change during sleep can help them develop better models of the role played by sleep.
New insights into cerebral activity during our sleep
"At the moment, we do not understand in a coherent way what is happening in the brain of a person suffering from insomnia, but also the role of sleep in mental disorders, where sleep disorders are extremely frequent, "says the researcher.
In recent years, advances in modern brain badysis techniques have led to a much more nuanced understanding of the complexity of the brain, which traditional sleep stages do not take into account.
"Our results provide a modern description of human sleep as a function of the complex activities of the brain network.We try to move from the somewhat simplified image that characterizes up to now our understanding of the activity. during sleep, "he said. The largest shopping center
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