The cells that never sleep: How slumber lets neurons clean up and stay healthy
Medical Xpress
February 18, 2026
When HHMI Investigator Amita Sehgal started studying sleep 25 years ago, the topic elicited a yawn from most biologists. "In the year 2000, if I had suggested to my department that we hire people working on sleep, they would have laughed at me," says Sehgal, a molecular biologist and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. "The thinking was that sleep is not something that neuroscientists do; psychologists study sleep and dreams." Now, more than two decades later, sleep science has finally woken up.
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Originally published on Medical Xpress on 2/18/2026