Anthony Carboni here for DNews and I had the worst insomnia from junior high almost all

the way up through college. It's awful. You're always drained, you can't think straight,

you're depressed. While insomnia can be a symptom of a lot of things, we've never really

pinpointed what the physiological change is in the body that makes it happen specifically.

Now, I never saw a specialist about it, but I'm pretty sure I had Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder-

it's common in teenagers and it basically means your circadian rhythm is all off-balance-

your biological clock doesn't match up with the day and night cycle. It can get less severe

as you get older- mine only happens for a couple weeks a time now, then goes away for

a bit.

Insomnia can also be caused by psychological things like stress or physical issues like

sleep apnea. But researchers looking to start treating insomnia at the biological root of

the problem found a potential culprit: plasticity in the brain's motor cortex.

We've talked about neuroplasticity before: its your brain's ability to adapt and change

to different stimuli and situations. It means if you want to change your habits or get better

at something, you can because your brain will adapt to it eventually. The going theory was

that since people who suffer from insomnia have decreased memory and a hard time concentrating

and retaining information, their brains would be less plastic. Maybe being unable to process

all that daytime info leads to sleeping problems.

But a new study out of Johns Hopkins university says no- an insomniac's motor cortex is more

adaptable than someone who can sleep easily. They hooked up some healthy sleepers and insomniacs

to electrodes and tried some transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS on them. Basically,

it delivers precise levels of electrical currents to parts of the brain- but not in a weird,

shock therapy, seen it in the movies way. In a more controlled, FDA approved, let's study

the brain and try to help people sort of way.

So, they basically trained the sleeping subjects, using TMS, to move their thumbs in a certain

way in reaction to stimulation. I feel like the more I explain this, the less safe TMS

is actually going to sound. AAAAANYWAY. Then they tried to retrain the subjects to have

their thumbs move in the OTHER direction. And the insomniacs adapted to the change much

more easily.

So- what does that mean? Is neuroplasticity bad? Is it causing insomnia or is it from the brain

of an insomniac trying help the body cope with all the other physical and emotional

stresses that come with a lack of sleep?

This is where I go "The researchers aren't sure," and you all groan, thumbs down and throw rotten

vegetables at me. But here's what's good and exciting about the research: if the overly

changeable motor cortex is connected to releasing all the stress hormones and causing all the

other emotional issues of insomnia, TMS could be used to calm the brain down and help people

get into the habit of healthy sleep. It'll also make diagnosing legitimate insomnia much

easier- right now there's no way to objectively test for it, so a lot of people think they're

insomniacs when they have other, more easily treatable issues- and vice versa.

In the meantime, if you're up, you can always tweet at me. There's a good chance I am up, too

You know, also thumb up the video. You're just sitting up in the dark. Just thumb up the video.