Your brain may need sleep to repair DNA ‘potholes’

A team of Israeli researchers has found that one of the reasons that sleep could be so important to animals — including humans — is that it takes neurons ‘off-line’ so DNA damage accumulated during waking hours can be repaired. Appelbaum speculates that animals have evolved sleep so as to take the neurons off-line, so the body can dedicate time and resources to DNA repair. “Perhaps, when you feel very tired, that’s because you’ve accumulated too much damage in the neuron, and the brain is signalling to the body to go to sleep in order to repair DNA.”

Source: www.cbc.ca