A team of researchers in Wisconsin and Italy has found that in rats kept awake past their bed times, their brains begin to turn themselves off, neuron by neuron, though the rat is still awake. Not only that, but the neurons that we use the most during the day are the ones that appear most likely to go offline. “It?s very worrisome. It means that even before we have obvious global signs of sleepiness, there are more local signs of tiredness and they have consequences on performance,” says Chiara Cirelli, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the researchers.
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