Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)
The engineer in me has to wonder: is this something we can synthesize?If it were possible to induce this "dishwasher-like" surge of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain during waking hours, would we be able to live off of significantly less (or no) sleep?I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good idea, but it would have a plethora of practical applications -- pilots, truckers, etc. would be able to stay awake in a healthful way, rather than by ingesting stimulants.I've been interested in the science of sleep for a while -- I wrote a side project, http://sleepyti.me, that actually gets quite a bit of traffic -- but neuroscience is mostly lost on me.