What does our brain do during sleep? It is not only dealing with the question: “Dream or no dream?” There are a lot of things more to do for our brain.
Process new impressions and consolidate learned stuff
Meanwhile, there are numerous studies that prove that processing and learning motor skills especially happens during REM-sleep and that consolidation of new knowledge especially needs deep sleep.
But, sleep is also helping to make decisions: during sleep, experiences of the day get processed, open questions and problems are worked up and often a solution is found by previous experiences.
Brain and hormones
Our hormonal balance, too, is very active during sleeping. For example the sleeping hormone melatonin that needs complete darkness, is important for falling asleep and sleeping through and is in direct connection with the happy hormone serotonin. Or the stress hormone cortisol that increasingly is released during the second half of the night and acts as counter player of melatonin and so prepares for waking up.
Our energy consumption during night is insignificantly lower than during waking state. Thanks to leptin (appetite curbing) -– which gets released during sleeping – we are still not feeling any appetite. As soon as we wake up, the hormone ghrelin (appetizing) is taking over again.
A last example: the growth hormone. This especially for athletes important hormone is increasingly released during deep sleep.
Detox
Just like the rest of the body, our brain detoxifies during sleep, too. Scientists found out, that our brain has an own detoxifying-system, the so-called “glymph-system”. Via this system waste products which accumulated during the day are disposed of during sleep. Especially important, because these toxins may lead to diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s.
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