What Your Brain Does While You’re Sleeping—The Recently Discovered Glymphatic System

While you’re sound asleep, your brain is hard at work. Some of the benefits of good sleep are obvious, but while you’re sleeping your brain is busy performing interesting tasks.

? Strengthening memory and creativity

Research indicates that your mind can strengthen memories or even practice skills that were learned while you were awake. In addition to consolidating and strengthening memories, your brain can reorganize and restructure them, resulting in greater creativity.

? Brain cleansing, also called the Glymphatic System

Because of the involvement of glial cells and its similarity to the lymphatic system, this recently discovered clearance system has been dubbed the glymphatic system. While you sleep, the glymphatic system eliminates soluble proteins, metabolites, and waste products from the central nervous system. It is also thought to help transport nutrients like glucose, lipids (fats), amino acids, and neurotransmitters in the brain.

The glymphatic system and its elimination of potentially neurotoxic waste functions primarily during sleep and is essentially shut down during wakefulness. This would also help explain the necessity of sleep across nearly all animal species.

The accumulation of waste products in the brain connects to many health conditions. Healthy sleep and its role in the glymphatic system are likely to be topics of great interest in the health and medical field in the foreseeable future.

For more information on the glymphatic system:

The Glymphatic System – Beginners Guide

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636982/

More on the benefits of sleep:

https://askthescientists.com/healthy-sleep/

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