In patients with dementia, the symptoms of brain cells dying, bad sleep and memory loss are far far worse than in normal ageing.

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She added this could specifically help medical and military training and further research could be carried out to see if sleep loss affected other brain and memory functions in a similar way.

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This work shows that sleep trains the brain and promotes memory reorganisation from the hippocampus to the striatum, meaning that navigation becomes more automatic.

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The result is an undermining of memory, sleep, appetite and (perhaps most worryingly for clubbers) sex drive.

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They also scavenge (detoxify) peoxynitrites and reverse part of their damage including partially restoring function to receptors involved in short-term memory, mood, sleep, smell, social recognition, alertness, and brain growth, increasing the transport of glucose reducing delusions and wandering, improving neurotransmissions by decreasing the hyperphosphorylation and tau proteins, and inhibiting the influx of calcium which kills neurons.

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