Memory and Sleep

Sleep and Memory

Image source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_bNH2snF38

 According to Robert Stickgold, Ph. D., and Peter Wehrwein, during sleep, our brain is extraordinarily active. And much of the activity helps the brain to learn, to remember, and to make connections. Researchers have designed ways to test several different types of memory. In almost every case, “sleeping on it” after first learning the task improves performance. 

 Sleep deprivation experiments have shown that a tired brain has a difficult time capturing memories of all sorts. Interestingly, sleep deprivation is more likely to cause us to forget information associated with positive emotion than information linked to negative emotion. This could explain, at least in part, why sleep deprivation can trigger depression in some people. 

 Sleep also seems to be the time when the brain’s two memory systems – the hippocampus and the neocortex – “talk” with one another. If a memory is to be retained, it must be shipped from the hippocampus to a place where it will endure- the neocortex, the wrinkled outer layer of the brain where higher thinking takes place. The neocortex is a master at weaving the old with the new. It’s not just memory that is improved by sleep. Recent studies indicate that sleep not only helps store facts, it also helps make connections between them. Some sleep researchers believe that for every two hours we spend awake, the brain needs an hour of sleep to figure out all these experiences mean, and that sleep plays a crucial role in constructing the meaning our lives come to hold Memory tips (To retain large amounts of information for the long term and to remember names) In a question and answer session, 

Aaron Philip Nelson, Ph.D., says:” The single best way to retain a large amount of information over time is to rehearse it periodically. Revisiting the material induces the brain to consolidate the information, thereby strengthening the neural network in the brain that contains the information as a pattern of electrical activity. Associating new information with previously learned material is also helpful; it allows you to borrow the mnemonic power of the familiar information.” According to him, "The failure to ‘remember’ a name is usually a failure of attention, not a failure of memory. In order to remember something later on, you need to truly learn it in the first place.”

 The above is extracted from the May 4, 2009 issue of Newsweek 

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