…Recently, some neuroscientists have proposed that the function of sleep is to reorganize connections and “prune” synapses—the connections between brain cells. Last year, one group of researchers, led by Gordon Wang of Stanford University reviewed the evidence for this idea in a paper called Synaptic plasticity in sleep: learning, homeostasis and disease.
This illustration, taken from their paper, shows the basic idea:
While we’re awake, your brain is forming memories. Memory formation involves a process called long-term potentiation (LTP), which is essentially the strengthening of synaptic connections between nerve cells. We also know that learning can actually cause neurons to sprout entirely new synapses.
Read the article at: The Crux | Discover Magazine.