人类和其他动物为何睡眠是生理学剩下的深层奥秘之一。神经科学的主导理论是睡眠是大脑“下线”时回放记忆以便更好地编码它们(“记忆巩固”)。另一种主导的竞争性理论就是睡眠在大脑网络的再平衡(re-balancing)中发挥着重要作用,而在清醒(waking,也译作醒着,或者唤醒)时的学习期间,大脑网络受到扰乱。大脑活动的这种“再平衡”涉及稳态可塑性(homeostatic plasticity)机制。这些机制是由美国布兰迪斯大学首次发现 Why humans and other animals sleep is one of the deep mysteries left behind by physiology. The dominant theory of neuroscience is to play back memories in order to better encode them (“Memory Consolidation”) when sleep is “off line” of the brain. Another dominant competitive theory is that sleep plays an important role in the re-balancing of the brain network, and the brain network is disrupted during learning while waking, or waking up, or awakened . This “rebalancing” of brain activity involves a homeostatic plasticity mechanism. These mechanisms were first discovered by Brandeis University in the United States