Sleep allows neural connection shrinking: crucial for learning
For as long as life has existed, everything alive has slept. Surely, the purpose of something as essential as sleep is fully understood in the scientific community. However, the “why” of sleep is what keeps scientists like Chiara Cirelli up at night. Cirelli, a UW-Madison professor of psychiatry, became passionate about discovering the purpose of sleep since she first learned about it while obtaining her dual doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Pisa.