The function of sleep is one of the most persistent and perplexing mysteries in biology. Many theories have been proposed to explain why we sleep, but most account for only a portion of sleep behavior and very few enjoy strong experimental support. A critical review of current findings leads to the following conclusions. Sleep is for the brain rather than the body, and the neural process most impacted by sleep is cognition. Sleep may influence cognition in many ways, including the removal of a toxic byproduct of wakefulness, or the restoration of neural substrates needed for mental processes. The evidence for these possibilities, however, is weak or equivocal. On the other hand, converging lines of evidence support the hypothesis that sleep promotes brain plasticity.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 23. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 July 2025.
All research outputs
#2,131,934
of 34,518,147 outputs
Outputs from Reviews in the Neurosciences
#43
of 619 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#14,724
of 238,363 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Reviews in the Neurosciences
#1
of 6 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,518,147 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 619 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.6. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 238,363 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 6 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them
