Scientists think sleep is the brain’s rinse cycle, when fluid percolating through the organ flushes out chemical waste that accumulated while we were awake. But what propels this circulation has been uncertain. A study of mice, reported today in Cell, suggests regular contractions of blood vessels in the brain, stimulated by the periodic release of a chemical cousin of adrenaline, push the fluid along.
“This is excellent science,” says neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel of Vanderbilt University, who wasn’t connected to the study. “They put a number of pieces of evidence together that tell a pretty compelling story.”
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