The Relationship Between Synaptic Plasticity and Sleep

When we're awake and talking, our synapses change and our proteins unfold. This process uses a lot of ATP. During the first part of the night, we rebuild ATP and clean out misfolded proteins during deep sleep waves.

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Episode notes

My guest this episode is Gina Poe, PhD, a professor in the department of integrative biology & physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). We discuss her research exploring how sleep impacts learning, memory, hormones and emotions. She discusses tools to enhance your quality of sleep, increase deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep and growth hormone release-- a key hormone for health, immune function and vitality. Dr. Poe explains how a specific brain area, the locus coeruleus, facilitates the processing of emotions, helps relieve traumas and how to maximize locus coeruleus function. She also explains sleep’s vital role in opiate addiction recovery and how anyone can determine their optimal sleep timing and duration. This episode is rich with basic science information and zero-cost tools to enhance quality and effectiveness of sleep for sake of mental health, physical health and performance.

For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com.