The Brain and Sleep

There is a legend that geniuses sleep little. For example, Margaret Thatcher slept no more than five hours a day. She thought it was better to limit sleep time but, in exchange, do her hair. Leonardo da Vinci, they say, slept 15 minutes, and between those short rest periods he took a 4-hour break to work. Neurophysiologist Vyacheslav Dubynin does not claim to say how much these stories correspond to the truth. But he knows for sure how dangerous such sleep-and-wake regimens are for us. After all, while we sleep, the brain does important work: it removes metabolic waste, processes the information received during the day, and helps the body recover.