Many people with brain problems are exhausted, and poor sleepers. A recent discovery by Maiken Nedergaard from the University of Rochester showed that in sleep the glia open up special channels that allow waste products and toxic buildups (including the proteins that build up in dementia) to be discharged from the brain through the cerebral spinal fluid, which bathes much of the brain. This unique channel system is ten times more active in the sleeping brain than in the waking state.
