Eric Topol January 12, 2025
How sleep prevents “dirty” brains that age faster
“Sleep is a non-negotiable biological state required for the maintenance of human life.…our need for sleep parallels those for air, food, and water.”—Grandner and Fernandez
Discovery of Glymphatics
In 2012, Maiken Nedergaard and her colleagues at the University of Rochester discovered the brain glymphatic pathway, the brain’s plumbing system similar to lymphatics in the body (but without lymph nodes), which consists of a network of fluid-filled and water channels (specifically aquaporin-4, AQP4, expressed on astrocytes) alongside (para) blood vessels to drain chemical waste, and facilitate movement of cerebrospinal fluid.
Since the initial discovery, we’ve learned much more about how the glymphatic pathway works.
Synchronized Neurons
In early 2024, 2 Nature publications demonstrated...
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