The effects on the brain after sleep deprivation

Amazing stuff! The motto for today: Take care of your cerebrospinal fluid! This is my second blog post today covering cerebrospinal fluid (see here)!

"... A new study ... reveals what happens inside the brain as these momentary failures of attention occur. The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows out of the brain — a process that typically occurs during sleep and helps to wash away waste products that have built up during the day. This flushing is believed to be necessary for maintaining a healthy, normally functioning brain.

When a person is sleep-deprived, it appears that their body attempts to catch up on this cleansing process by initiating pulses of CSF flow. However, this comes at a cost of dramatically impaired attention. ..."

From the abstract:

"Sleep deprivation rapidly disrupts cognitive function and in the long term contributes to neurological disease. Why sleep deprivation has such profound effects on cognition is not well understood.

Here we use simultaneous fast fMRI–EEG to test how sleep deprivation modulates cognitive, neural and fluid dynamics in the human brain.

We demonstrate that attentional failures during wakefulness after sleep deprivation are tightly orchestrated in a series of brain–body changes, including neuronal shifts, pupil constriction and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow pulsations, pointing to a coupled system of fluid dynamics and neuromodulatory state.

CSF flow and hemodynamics are coupled to attentional function within the awake state, with CSF pulsations following attentional impairment. The timing of these dynamics is consistent with a vascular mechanism regulated by neuromodulatory state.

The attentional costs of sleep deprivation may thus reflect an irrepressible need for rest periods driven by a central neuromodulatory system that regulates both neuronal and fluid physiology."

This is your brain without sleep | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "New research shows attention lapses due to sleep deprivation coincide with a flushing of fluid from the brain — a process that normally occurs during sleep."

Attentional failures after sleep deprivation are locked to joint neurovascular, pupil and cerebrospinal fluid flow dynamics (open access)

Fig. 1: After sleep deprivation, CSF flow exhibits large sleep-like low-frequency waves during wakefulness.