Dr. Michael Grandner

And those two things work in concert with each other.

Think of it this way.

When you're experiencing the day, you're taking in lots of experiences and information.

Some of those experiences and information are important.

You will learn from, are related to important things.

Maybe they're not super important, but they're worth keeping.

And a lot of those are not that important.

Like that piece of equipment over there, I don't need to remember it tomorrow.

It's not, I will remember it for the next few minutes, but it's not that important to my life.

It will get filtered out.

So what ends up happening in slow wave sleep and in the deep sleep, the experiences from the day and all those new things floating around,

They sort of get sorted and the things that are important are kept and everything else gets let, it gets let to fade.

Interestingly, this similar thing happens where the spaces between your brain cells actually increases and like sort of like a, like actually like a, like a filter, it increases and actually waste products can start clearing out of your brain.

Is it because you're thinking parts of your brain are working a little bit less and it gives it the chance to do that?

Who knows?

But it seems to happen specifically during that time.

Just very protected at the beginning of the night.

So when you're after a few hours into the night,

that cleaning out process is done, and then the cycles toward the end of the night.

So drop down to deep, up into REM, and then you cycle through, but the cycles change.