Sleep: Snooze Button

HHMI News: Researchers Find the Snooze Button: "With help from some drowsy fruit flies, a team of researchers from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has identified a region of the fruit fly's brain that is crucial to controlling sleep.
The finding, reported in the June 8, 2006, issue of the journal Nature, is important because it identifies a new role for brain structures, called mushroom bodies, which have now been shown to control fruit fly slumber. Mushroom bodies were known to be involved in processing sensory information and memory. Thus, the new studies lend support to the idea that sleep helps the brain consolidate learning and memory. "