EnglishLady
Veteran Expediter
Telegraph Jan 25
If you want knowledge to stick then it is best to take a nap after absorbing it, claims new research
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 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.
During wakefulness, however, this period of reactivation renders the memories more fragile.
Learning more information at this juncture will likely make it harder to commit the first batch to deep memory.
Bjorn Rasch of the University of Lubeck in Germany and three colleagues assumed that the same thing happens when we sleep, and designed an experiment to find out if they were right.
Twenty-four volunteers were asked to memorise 15 pairs of cards showing pictures of animals and everyday objects.
While performing the exercise, they were exposed to a slightly unpleasant odour.
Forty minutes later, half the subjects who had stayed awake were asked to learn a second, slightly different pattern of cards.
Just before starting, they were again made to smell the same odour, designed to trigger their memory of the first exercise.
The 12 other subjects, meanwhile, did the second exercise after a brief snooze, during which they were exposed to the odour while in a state called slow-wave sleep.
Both groups were then tested on the original task.
Much to the surprise of the researchers, the sleep group performed significantly better, retaining on average 85 per cent of the patterns, compared to 60 per cent for those who had remained awake.
"Reactivation of memories had completely different effects on the state of wakefulness and sleep," said lead author Susanne Diekelmann, also from the University of Lubeck.
"Based on brain imaging data, we suggest the reason for this unexpected result is that already during the first few minutes of sleep, the transfer from hippocampus to neocortex has been initiated," she said in an email exchange.
After only 40 minutes of shuteye, significant chunks of memory were already "downloaded" and stored where they "could no longer be disrupted by new information that is encoded in the hippocampus," she explained.
Zzzzzzzz
If you want knowledge to stick then it is best to take a nap after absorbing it, claims new research
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 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.
During wakefulness, however, this period of reactivation renders the memories more fragile.
Learning more information at this juncture will likely make it harder to commit the first batch to deep memory.
Bjorn Rasch of the University of Lubeck in Germany and three colleagues assumed that the same thing happens when we sleep, and designed an experiment to find out if they were right.
Twenty-four volunteers were asked to memorise 15 pairs of cards showing pictures of animals and everyday objects.
While performing the exercise, they were exposed to a slightly unpleasant odour.
Forty minutes later, half the subjects who had stayed awake were asked to learn a second, slightly different pattern of cards.
Just before starting, they were again made to smell the same odour, designed to trigger their memory of the first exercise.
The 12 other subjects, meanwhile, did the second exercise after a brief snooze, during which they were exposed to the odour while in a state called slow-wave sleep.
Both groups were then tested on the original task.
Much to the surprise of the researchers, the sleep group performed significantly better, retaining on average 85 per cent of the patterns, compared to 60 per cent for those who had remained awake.
"Reactivation of memories had completely different effects on the state of wakefulness and sleep," said lead author Susanne Diekelmann, also from the University of Lubeck.
"Based on brain imaging data, we suggest the reason for this unexpected result is that already during the first few minutes of sleep, the transfer from hippocampus to neocortex has been initiated," she said in an email exchange.
After only 40 minutes of shuteye, significant chunks of memory were already "downloaded" and stored where they "could no longer be disrupted by new information that is encoded in the hippocampus," she explained.
Zzzzzzzz
