A recent experiment on fruit flies has proved that a hectic social life makes them take longer naps. This seemingly simple finding could prove important in helping to understand why we sleep, and what effect socializing has on our brain circuitry.
The impact of sleep on our memories is an area of great interest for neuroscientists. It has been shown previously that sleeping on a newly learned task can improve performance, and that disrupting sleep can affect learning. So sleep is thought to be important in the process by which the brain organizes and consolidates memories.
To investigate how increased social experiences might affect sleep and memory, a research team of Indrani Ganguly-Fitzgerald of the Neurosciences Institute in San Deigo, California and colleagues turned to fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster).
The researchers took flies immediately after birth and put them into groups: some went into a social environment with at least 30 other flies, others went into isolation. They stayed there for 3 to 4 days before being tested.
Socialized flies slept four times as long during their daytime naps, kipping for about an hour as compared with a loner fly's 15-minute power naps. They had the same sleep behaviours as each other at night, they report in Science.
All this suggests that afternoon naps may be important for consolidation of memories, whereas night-time sleep may have a different function for flies.
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