Lost sleep = Lost Brain Cells

Yes, you read right.
Insufficient sleep is not only detrimental for our physical health but a recent study says it also leads to brain cell death.

The study conducted at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine was published in the latest issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. While studying lack of sleep in mice, the researchers noticed prolonged lack of sleep lead to 25% of certain brain cells dying. After further observation and research the team concluded that similar damage is most likely occurs in human too.

As explained in the abstract of the article, "Modern society enables a shortening of sleep times, yet long-term consequences of extended wakefulness on the brain are largely unknown. Essential for optimal alertness, locus ceruleus neurons (LCns) are metabolically active neurons that fire at increased rates across sustained wakefulness. We hypothesized that wakefulness is a metabolic stressor to LCns and that, with extended wakefulness, adaptive mitochondrial metabolic responses fail and injury ensues."

With prolonged sleep deprivation the processes that maintain a health metabolic homeostasis in the brain can not be sustained, hence may lead to significant irreversible injury.  Although much more research and work needs to be done to determine whether loss of sleep can lead to real brain damage.

In the end, for all of us who survive on minimal sleep, it is clearly time to make an extra effort to ensure we get a good prolonged sleep every night.



References:

Extended Wakefulness: Compromised Metabolics in and Degeneration of Locus Ceruleus Neurons (The Journal of Neuroscience -March 19th 2014) 

Lost sleep leads to loss of brain cells, study suggests (BBC World News- Health March 19th 2014)