Missing out on sleep may cause the brain to stop producing new cells, a study has suggested. The work on rats, by a team from Princeton University found lack of sleep affected the hippocampus, a brain region involved in forming memories.
The research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science showed a stress hormone causes the effect. A UK expert said it would be interesting to see if too little rather than no sleep had the same consequence.
The researchers compared animals who were deprived of sleep for 72 hours with others who were not. They found those who missed out on rest had higher levels of the stress hormone.
It would be interesting to see if partial sleep deprivation - getting a little bit less sleep every night that you need - had the same effect. They also produced significantly fewer new brain cells in a particular region of the hippocampus.