womens: Mental diseases are formed in adolescence

Chronic sleep deprivation in Teens - discos and night cramming lessons can respond with schizophrenia and other pathologies of the nervous system. The reason - lack of time for which the brain could eliminate unnecessary communication between neurons.

Knots

Maturing brain Zapletal and raspletal separate pouches - synapses, which nerve cells are connected to each other. In a healthy brain, these processes occur simultaneously: one "bundle" disappears, another appears. If the balance is disturbed, the brain becomes full of unnecessary links or, on the contrary, esperada "holes". And excess, and lack of synapses leads to a complex pathologies of the nervous system, memory disorders and schizophrenia.

The balance between the processes of birth and killing synapses depends on many internal and external factors. For example, the synapses of the hippocampus die from stress. These findings came after the experiment, in which laboratory mice survived all that the citizens experience every day, getting to work. As in the experiment with macaques scientists have shown that due to the lack of thin dendritic spines, which form synapses, aging animals lose the ability to remember new information.

Teenage brain

In adolescence, puberty, the brain of a mammal undergoing a colossal change. Between neurons are constantly forming new connections (synapses), some of which soon dies. Others remain forever.

Scientists from the University of Wisconsin in Madison (University of Wisconsin, Madison) suggested that the restructuring of the network of synapses affects not only the stress and learning process, but sleep. For example, mice adolescent team of biologists led by Dr. Stephanie Mary (Stephanie Maret) has tracked the changes that happen in the brain during sleep and wakefulness.

In previous studies, researchers from the University of Wisconsin have found that during sleep the synapses weaken and shrink. "Apparently, the brain prepares for training and the perception of new information: communication between neurons shrink and weaken in order during wakefulness again to become stronger and to grow," the scientists write, referring to the results of previous works.

In recent work, the results of which appeared in Nature Neuroscience, scientists have tracked the growth and aging of synapses using confocal (two-photon) microscopy. They studied the synapses of mice-adolescents (aged animals 29±4 days), either slept, or forced scientists watched 8-10 hours a day.

Night weeding

It turned out that sleep and wakefulness have different effects on synapses: the density of dendritic spines (those without which the old macaques could not remember new information) during sleep was decreased, and in the process of wakefulness increased.

This means that, theoretically, due to excessive wakefulness in humans may increase the number and density of synapses. However, this does not mean that the less people sleep, the better his memory. On the contrary, the authors of the study believe that sleepless night in adolescence can respond schizophrenia or other head problems.

The fact that the systematic destruction of synapses that occurs during maturation of the brain, is the "weeding". As demonstrated by scientists from research centers in Italy under the leadership of Rose Paolicelli (Rosa C. Paolicelli) from the European molecular biology laboratory the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL), the more "weed" neuronal connections remains in the brain, the less developed "cultivated" synapses.

Experiments scientists are continuing. So far, they do not make final conclusions. But, presumably, chronic sleep deprivation in adolescence, during the global "demarcation" of the brain, may be the Foundation for the development of pathologies of the nervous system.

Schizophrenia begins in childhood, but makes itself felt much later. It is possible that sleep and wakefulness is important in the development of this disease," the researchers conclude, promising to understand delayed responses to chronic sleep deprivation. However, it is not always necessary to wait for delayed effects: not sleeping enough human memory problems appear almost immediately.