This study shows why we need research funded by the government, not just by private business. This study was funded by the government. Drug companies are not motivated to study things that show that their products have harmful effects. When their studies do turn up adverse effects, the companies often suppress the information.http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/wsu-rsc062915.php
Public Release: 3-Jul-2015
Washington State University
Rapid eye movement or REM sleep actively converts waking experiences into lasting memories and abilities in young brains reports a new study from Washington State University Spokane.
The finding, published in Science Advances, broadens the understanding of children's sleep needs and calls into question the increasing use of REM-disrupting medications such as stimulants and antidepressants.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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"REM sleep acts like the chemical developer in old-fashioned photography to make traces of experience more permanent and focused in the brain," said Frank.
"Experience is fragile," he said. "These traces tend to vanish without REM sleep and the brain basically forgets what it saw."
Frank said young brains, including those of human children, go through critical periods of plasticity - or remodeling - when vision, speech, language, motor skills, social skills and other higher cognitive functions are developed.
The study suggests that during these periods, REM sleep helps growing brains adjust the strength or number of their neuronal connections to match the input they receive from their environment, he said.
In the 1960s, Frank said surgeons noticed that delayed removal of congenital cataracts in children resulted in severe problems such as double vision and the inability to align the eyes.
"The visual cortex is very sensitive to information it is receiving and there are critical periods for its development," he said. "If vision is blocked at these stages, then problems result."
[So if a family is too poor to get proper medical care for their child, the child can have permanent vision problems, reducing their ability to have a productive life, and making it more likely that they will need government services for the rest of their life.]
The study used a model based on that finding to determine the specific effects of REM sleep on vision development. Animals had a patch placed over one eye and their brain activity was monitored both while awake and during sleep.
While in REM sleep, the animals were awakened intermittently by gentle tapping on their enclosures. Controls were awakened during non-REM sleep.
Analyses showed that normal vision did not develop in animals experiencing a REM sleep deficit.
"Without REM sleep, permanent plastic changes to the visual cortex did not occur and the ERK enzyme did not activate," said Frank.
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"There is a lot of data accumulating that says the amount of sleep a child gets impacts his/her ability to do well in school," he said. "This study helps explain why this might be - and why we should be cautious about restricting sleep in our children.
"We know there are different times in a child's development when sleep needs increase - they are very high in babies but also in adolescents when their brains are changing rapidly," he said.
"Also, it is becoming more common for pediatricians to give compounds that affect brain activity earlier in life - not just Ritalin for attention deficit disorder, but also antidepressants and other drugs," said Frank.
"The fact is, we have very little pre-clinical research data to tell us what these drugs are doing to developing brains in both the short and long term," he said.
"Almost all of these compounds can potentially suppress sleep and REM sleep in particular. REM sleep is very fragile - it can be inhibited by drugs very easily," he said.
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