An American study from Princeton University suggests that missing out on sleep may cause the brain to stop producing new cells.
People who experience a lack of sleep experience concentration problems and other difficulties. The study conducted by New Jersey’s Princeton University and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science research on rats found that the hippocampus portion of the brain was directly affected by a lack of sleep for a long period, the BBC reported.
British sleep expert Dr. Neil Stanley called the finding “interesting,” but said more study on sleep depravation might be useful. “It would be interesting to see if partial sleep deprivation — getting a little bit less sleep every night than you need — had the same effect,” he told the BBC.
Sleep is a biological imperative critical to the maintenance of mental and physical health. It is a state of lessened consciousness and decreased physical activity during which the organism slows down and repairs itself.