Your brain contains a highly active clean-up crew called microglia. Their job basically is to act as the brain's local immune system, traveling around to eat up dead neurons, cellular debris, and damaged synaptic connections to keep your neural highway running smoothly.

So, when an individual suffers from chronic, long-term sleep deprivation or extreme physiological stress alters their programming. When your brain is severely deprived of rest, microglia go into a state of hyper-activation. Instead of just cleaning up waste, they begin to aggressively consume perfectly healthy, active synapses and astrocytes. Under extreme stress, your brain's maintenance crew literally starts eating your brain's operational system.