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Sleep: hitting the reset button

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.

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Figure 1: The sleep state may provide an opportunity to reset synapses in the brain, depotentiating them back to baseline Awake episode is possible.

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Griffith, L., Rosbash, M. Sleep: hitting the reset button. Nat Neurosci 11, 123–124 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn0208-123

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