Get the latest tech news

Sleeping more flushes junk out of the brain

Rhythmic activity during sleep may get fluids in the brain moving.

The brain has to dispose of its garbage somehow, and it does this through what’s called the (no, that’s not a typo), which carries cerebrospinal fluid that moves debris out of the parenchyma through channels located near blood vessels. To see what told the glymphatic system to dump the trash, scientists performed experiments on mice, inserting probes into their brains and planting electrodes in the spaces between neurons. Other earlier experiments worked poorly because of injuries caused by older and more invasive methods of implanting the monitoring hardware into brain tissues.

Get the Android app