Download Sleep Helps the Brain!

Sleep Helps the
Brain!
A Lesson on the Importance of Sleep After a TBI
Created For You By:
No Limits Eastern Shore
www.nolimiteasternshore.com
Please feel free to download, print, or share this
PowerPoint with credit given to No Limits
Eastern Shore.
“A senior National Football League
official acknowledged for the first
time the link between head injuries in
football and a degenerative brain
disease called chronic traumatic
encephalopathy.”
This admission has been compared with Big
Tobacco’s 1997 disclosure that smoking causes
cancer!
Effective TBI Treatments
• Remains undecided – some doctors prescribed
to rest for several weeks while others claim
too much rest is actually negative and urge
their patients to stay active.
University Hospital Zurich
(UHZ)
• A team of researchers at UHZ have
found that forcing the “slow-wave”
cycle of sleep in patients recovering
from TBI may increase cognitive
function and recovery overall.
– Slow-wave sleeps lessens damage to the
axons of the brain or the long
projections of your neurons that
communicate with other brain cells.
– Axon damage has been proven to cause
buildup of neurotoxic molecular waste
products (proteins) – which may be able
to be reversed by inducing the “slowwave” sleep state.
What is Slow-Wave Sleep?
The deepest stage of sleep that is characterized by
low-frequency, high-amplitude waves that helps
the brain clear out protein build up often
caused by axonal damage.
(Axonal damage
is very
common
after
a TBI!)
The Experiment
• 25 rats with prefrontal cortex injuries were divided into 3 groups:
1. The 1st was treated with sodium oxybate which is a drug used to
produce slow-wave brain function.
2. The 2nd was forced to stay awake for prolonged periods of time –
studies have shown that sleep deprivation leads to slow-wave
sleep naturally during a process called “rebound sleep.”
3. The 3rd group was given placebo drugs.
Experiment (continued)
• Using electroencephalography researchers were able to prove that
the first 2 groups of rats had indeed been induced into a slow-wave
sleep state.
• They then tested the cognitive abilities of all 3 groups.
• The rats that had received enhanced sleep treatments performed
better on various cognitive tests such as object recognition and
memory recall.
Further experimentation
needs to be done before
sleep treatments will be
implemented on humans to
treat TBI – but this is one of
the first times that
enhanced sleep therapy has
been proven to reverse
certain symptoms of TBI and
other brain diseases noninvasively.
Citations
• Photographs on all pages - © ClipArt
• Cepelewicz, Jordana. "Inducing Deep Sleep
after Head Injury May Protect the
Brain." Scientific American. Springer Nature,
23 Mar. 2016. Web. 24 Mar. 2016.