Sleep and Synaptic Homeostasis

1. Before the article by Aton et al., there have been no studies with the potential to disprove SHY. Far from it, unless one disqualifies the many studies whose results turned out to support rather than disprove SHY.3 In particular, the studies quoted by Heller, by both us4–6 and others7 found molecular, electrophysiological, and structural evidence that net synaptic strength increases with wake and decreases with sleep. Yet, if the opposite had happened, or had there been no net changes, these very same studies would have proven SHY wrong.