Another benefit of sleep; it keeps you from forgetting!

Another benefit of sleep; it keeps you from forgetting! http://ow.ly/OnKDC

In this cool Cell article Davis and colleagues show that sleep facilitates memory retention by blocking dopamine neuron-mediated forgetting. In Drosophila, the ongoing activity of specific dopamine neurons regulates the forgetting of olfactory memories.

This ongoing dopaminergic activity is modulated with behavioral state, increasing robustly with locomotor activity and decreasing with rest. Increasing sleep-drive, with either sleep-promoting agents Gaboxadol or by genetic stimulation of the neural circuit for sleep, decreases ongoing dopaminergic activity, while enhancing memory retention!

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A new ‘Pain Sensing’ gene discovered!

Researchers analysed the genetic make-up of 11 families across Europe and Asia affected by an inherited condition known as congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). This enabled them to pinpoint the cause of the condition to variants of the gene PRDM12. Family members affected by CIP carried two copies of the variant; however, if they had only inherited one copy from their parents, they were unaffected. PRDM12 had previously been implicated in the modification of chromatin, a small molecule that attaches to our DNA and acts like a switch to turn genes on and off (an effect known as epigenetics). The researchers showed that all the genetic variants of PRDM12 in the CIP patients blocked the gene's function. The team looked at nerve biopsies taken from the patients to see what had gone wrong and found that particular pain-sensing neurons were absent. From these clinical features of the disease, the team predicted that there would be a block to the production of pain-sensing neur...

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The Healthiest Sleeping Positions

We all know how important the right posture is for your health throughout the day. But did you know that this doesn't stop once you close your eyes at night? Which sleeping positions are best? which ones are the sleeping equivalent of walking on your hands? This great info-graphic lays it all out.

Mahantesh Biradar

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