Memories take hold better during sleep — study
FEATURE |
PARIS — The best way to not forget a newly learned poem, card trick or algebra equation may be to take a quick nap, scientists surprised by their own findings reported Sunday.
In experiments, researchers in Germany showed that the brain is better during sleep than during wakefulness at resisting attempts to scramble or corrupt a recent memory.
Their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights into the hugely complex process by which we store and retrieve deliberately acquired information — learning, in short.
Earlier research showed that fresh memories, stored temporarily in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, do not gel immediately.
It was also known that reactivation of those memories soon after learning plays a crucial role in their transfer to more permanent storage in the brain’s “hard drive,” the neocortex..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110125com3.html
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