Non-REM sleep consists of four sleep stages: two stages of light sleep and two of deep sleep. Research suggests that stage two of light sleep is where the brain starts to work on memory consolidation.

Deep sleep stages three and four is when restorative sleep happens and is essential for learning. Then there's REM sleep, which goes even further into processing memories and emotions. There's a lot that happens in the brain only while we sleep.

Your brain also does housekeeping tasks while you sleep, including removing toxins, encouraging communication between neurons and storing new information from the day. Sleep is also essential for neuroplasticity , or the brain's ability to adapt.

Without quality rest, you can't function as well as you could on a good night's sleep. You may not have been making the connection between poor sleep and daily functionality.

But it's there. One of the first things you'll notice when you don't get enough sleep is the feeling of being scatterbrained. In other words, your thought processes are slower, and paying attention is difficult when you haven't slept well.

You get confused easily and have a hard time carrying out simple tasks. According to a study published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, lack of sleep decreases task-related activity in the brain's frontal and parietal parts.

That means you have difficulty concentrating and can't effectively block out distractions. Your capacity to sustain attention over time also decreases. Memory consolidation happens when we sleep. Essentially, your brain decides what's important to keep from the day and what isn't while you're in a deep sleep.

The neural connections for important memories are strengthened and connected to past ones during REM sleep. Lack of sleep and fragmented sleep -- meaning you don't spend enough time in the sleep cycles -- will compromise your ability to form and recall memories.

Add in the inability to concentrate, and it's a recipe for forgetfulness. In the same way that sleep allows our brain to retain and strengthen memory, it also helps us learn. When you're tired, things don't stick because the brain isn't as effective at processing information.

Without restorative sleep, the neurons in your brain don't get a chance to rest. If they stay active for too long, neuroplasticity is inhibited , and learning is difficult. The compounding effects of poor sleep, the inability to concentrate and remember things, can make it feel impossible to learn things while you're tired.

Not getting enough sleep directly impacts the state of your mental health. And it doesn't take much to see changes in your mood or ability to cope with stress. The dye flowed rapidly when the mice were asleep or anesthetized, but slowed to a sludge-like crawl when the mice were awake.

These same researchers also injected mice with labeled beta-amyloid and measured how long it lasted in their brains when they were awake or asleep. The results: interstitial space volume increased by 60 percent when the mice were asleep. In addition, toxic waste products, including beta-amyloid, disappeared at twice the rate in the brains of sleeping mice compared to those who were awake.

So perhaps there's not only less production of beta-amyloid during sleep, but more clearance as well. Brain cells are highly sensitive to their environment. Toxins can interfere with nerve function and damage cells, so it's essential to quickly and efficiently remove waste products from the interstitial space.

Yet, unlike every other organ in the body, the brain doesn't have a conventional lymphatic system to flush out waste products, explains Dr. Instead, CSF recirculates through the brain, interchanging with interstitial fluid and removing toxic proteins, including beta-amyloid.

This plumbing system in the brain, which Dr. Deane's team has dubbed the glymphatic system, offers a potential solution to a mystery that has baffled brain researchers: how does the brain get rid of waste without the help of a lymphatic system? When you host a party, you don't begin the process of cleaning up until after the guests head home.

Brain cells operate similarly. When they're busy working and supporting normal function, they are not clearing material.

During the sleep phase, they switch roles and get rid of waste products. Previous research seems to support these findings. A study, also published in Science , reported that the amount of beta-amyloid found in the interstitial fluid of a mouse model of AD increased markedly during periods of sleep deprivation.

And a study, published in the medical journal Archives of Neurology , showed that beta-amyloid levels in the spinal fluid of humans rose during waking hours and fell during sleep—a pattern that was more pronounced in healthy young people.

This growing body of research not only reaffirms the importance of sleep; it also hints at potential new strategies for slowing the onset and progression of AD and cognitive impairment.

In fact, several studies have looked at the link between sleep disturbance and cognitive decline—not just limited to insomnia, sleep duration, or sleep fragmentation, but also looking at sleep-disordered breathing, a condition characterized by abnormal breathing patterns during sleep that affects up to 60 percent of older adults.

For more coverage of sleep, including the cognitive effects of sleep-disordered breathing—such as due to obstructive sleep apnea— read more. A study of nearly women published in Journal of the American Medical Association , for example, found that among older women, sleep-disordered breathing was associated with developing cognitive impairment.

Other studies suggest that better sleep mitigates the effects of the gene apolipoprotein E e4 APOE4 , a common and well-established risk factor for AD. Communities Find a chemistry community of interest and connect on a local and global level. Technical Divisions Local Sections Industry Resources International Chapters International Resources Green Chemistry Roundtables Senior Chemists Student Chapters High School Club Women Chemists.

View all Communities. Discover Chemistry Explore the interesting world of science with articles, videos and more. Science Articles ACS Webinars Green Chemistry Safety Tiny Matters Podcast News Releases Reactions Videos Landmarks in Chemical History Infographics. View all Discover Chemistry. You are here: American Chemical Society Discover Chemistry PressPacs How sleep deprivation can harm the brain.

How sleep deprivation can harm the brain. PressPacs September 6, Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Pinterest Email. Sleep deprivation decreases the amount of a factor that protects neurons.

Related Tags: Health Medicine. Media Contact ACS Newsroom newsroom acs. Related Content Some spiders can transfer mercury contamination to land animals, study shows. Developing a less invasive test for inflammatory bowel disease.

More From This Series Watching paint dry — to understand and control the patterns it leaves behind.

University of Berkeley. The amygdala— also known as the fear center of the brain— alerts the body to protect itself during times of danger.

As mentioned in the study examining sleep and anxiety, without sleep, the amygdala goes into overdrive, shutting down the prefrontal cortex. Essentially, your prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain in charge of your ability to think rationally.

In short, when people lack sufficient sleep, judgment becomes impaired, emotions run out of control and the ability to think rationally is severely impacted. This is just one more reason to get the recommended hours of sleep. Related: 5 Lifestyle Changes to Get Hours of Quality Sleep.

Observing participants, the study found that sleep-deprived people make twice as many placekeeping errors during tests, and have three times as many attention lapses as those who get a full amount of sleep. In addition to impairing rational thought and good judgment, sleep deprivation also causes memory loss.

In fact, your sleep plays a key role in memory creation and recall. This is because the brain waves responsible for storing memories are produced during sleep. These brain waves help transfer memories from the hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex-where long-term memories are stored.

This can lead to forgetfulness. Sleep also affects your ability to concentrate. The MSU study also asked participants to take two sets of sleep assessment tests— before the first set of tests, all participants had at least 6 hours of sleep the night before.

One test observed how fast they reacted to stimulus, and the second test looked at their placekeeping ability during testing. After the initial test, 77 participants were kept awake all night. The remaining 61 were allowed to go home and get plenty of rest.

The next day, those who got insufficient sleep performed much worse on their cognitive tests. For example, the error rate on the placekeeping test jumped from 15 to 30 percent for those who did not get enough rest.

For those who got at least 6 hours of sleep the following night, their error rate was essentially unchanged. Related : How To Use Your Sleep Cycle For Your Best Sleep. Following the completion of the above study, one of the MSU researchers insisted that sleep-deprived individuals need to exercise caution in everything that they do, especially if driving cars or using heavy machinery.

One study published by Occupational and Environmental Medicine observed 7, workers across a variety of industries for a year to examine the effect chronic sleep deprivation had on them. The results showed a strong link between sleep loss and workplace accidents, with sleep-deprived people being 70 percent more likely to be involved in an accident than those getting sufficient sleep.

This built on previous research from the Journal of Sleep Research that observed 50, workers over a two-decade span. This study found that those who suffered from disturbed sleep were twice as likely to die in a work-related accident. Even with the nightly recommended 7 to 9 hours, the effects of sleep deprivation can still pose a threat and may be a symptom of an underlying sleep disorder.

If you wake up feeling tired and groggy regardless of how long you slept, and exhibit signs of sleep deprivation throughout the day, you may have an underlying sleep disorder like sleep apnea.

People with obstructive sleep apnea experience either a partially blocked or a completely blocked airway during sleep. This blockage creates pauses in your breathing, reducing oxygen levels in your body and preventing deep restful sleep. This leads to chronic sleep deprivation, even if you get enough hours of sleep each night.

It can help you make better sense of your symptoms so you can discuss them with your doctor or a sleep specialist. A sleep specialist may recommend an overnight sleep study to evaluate your sleep patterns or a home sleep apnea test to determine whether or not a sleep disorder is causing your sleep deprivation.

Getting adequate sleep should not be a challenge— contact us today to get back to the restful, healthy sleep you deserve.

Ben Simon, Eti, et al. Anwar, Yasmin. Stepan, Michelle E, et al. Swaen, G M H, et al. Akerstedt, T, et al. National Library of Medicine, Mar.

A Real Brain Drain: Sleep Deprivation and Its Effects on The Brain by Sleep Center of Middle Tennessee Last updated Dec 12, Subscribe to receive our top sleep tips.

Get better sleep tonight! Search for:. Recent Posts Are There Home Remedies for Sleep Apnea? If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing.

By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Technically sleep starts in the brain areas that produce SWS. Scientists now have concrete evidence that two groups of cells—the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus in the hypothalamus and the parafacial zone in the brain stem—are involved in prompting SWS.

When these cells switch on, it triggers a loss of consciousness. After SWS, REM sleep begins. This mode is bizarre: a dreamer's brain becomes highly active while the body's muscles are paralyzed, and breathing and heart rate become erratic.

The purpose of REM sleep remains a biological mystery, despite our growing understanding of its biochemistry and neurobiology.

We do know that a small group of cells in the brain stem, called the subcoeruleus nucleus, controls REM sleep. When these cells become injured or diseased, people do not experience the muscle paralysis associated with REM sleep, which can lead to REM sleep behavior disorder—a serious condition in which the afflicted violently act out their dreams.

September 1, 2 min read. Credit: Todd Warnock Getty Images.