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Nature Neuroscience 11, 123–124 (1 February 2008) | doi:10.1038/nn0208-123

Sleep: hitting the reset button

Leslie C Griffith & Michael Rosbash

Many aspects of sleep, including the how and why, are still mysterious, especially its relationship to learning and memory. A new study suggests that sleep may serve to reset synaptic potentiation, linking it to homeostatic plasticity. How and why do we spend a third of our lives asleep, and why do even fruit flies do it? Although we have all experienced the poor performance that accompanies inadequate sleep, many aspects of sleep remain mysterious, or at the very least controversial.