Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep

Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep
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Introduction

Sleep is an important part of your daily routine—you spend about one-third of your time doing it.  Quality sleep – and getting enough of it at the right times -- is as essential to survival as food and water.  Without sleep you can’t form or maintain the pathways in your brain that let you learn and create new memories, and it’s harder to concentrate and respond quickly.

Sleep is important to a number of brain functions, including how nerve cells (neurons) communicate with each other.  In fact, your brain and body stay remarkably active while you sleep.  Recent findings suggest that sleep plays a housekeeping role that removes toxins in your brain that build up while you are awake.

National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
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A part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, NIH is the largest biomedical research agency in the world.
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