Have you ever dozed off in the middle of a conversation and have no idea what the other person was talking about? Neuroscientists have always suspected it, but MIT team proves that part of your brain remains asleep while the rest are awake.

The brilliant people at MIT uses ‘optogenetics’ to stimulate a part of the brain associated with sleeping in mice. This process lets scientists modify mouse brain with algae DNA to make them light sensitive, after which they will hit targeted part of the brain with lasers and observe the result.

Using optogenetics, the MIT team strongly stimulated the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) and they observe the TRN not only triggers slow sleep waves across the brain, but control individual regions as well.

The research could open doors to safer anaesthetic techniques and probably help insomniac with improved drugs.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us lay people, now we know we’re not just bored out of our mind when we doze off; our brain’s just taking a break from all the hard work it’s doing.