title: Sleep Is for Forgetting.
abstract: It is possible that one of the essential functions of sleep is to take out the garbage, as it were, erasing and "forgetting" information built up throughout the day that would clutter the synaptic network that defines us. It may also be that this cleanup function of sleep is a general principle of neuroscience, applicable to every creature with a nervous system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-7246 ginapoe@ucla.edu.
authors.forename: Gina R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Poe
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D000069077:Memory Consolidation / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D012895:Sleep, REM / Q000502:physiology
keywords: REM sleep; TR sleep; depotentiation; development; mental health; noradrenaline; spindles; theta