Remembrance of Things Past Requires a Good Night's Sleep
Remembrance of Things Past Requires a Good Night's Sleep
Nov. 21, 2000 -- Sleep may, as Shakespeare wrote, "knit the raveled sleeve of care," but it also appears to weave the threads of experience into a solid fabric of memory and learning, say sleep researchers in the December issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
In two separate studies, researchers from the U.S. and Germany report that when we lose sleep, we also may lose the ability to store memories acquired during the day -- even after we've repaid a sleep "debt."
In other words, the next time you're caught napping on the job, you can tell the boss that you're just trying to commit an important task to memory.
"The average person requires about eight hours of sleep per night, but many otherwise healthy people continually deprive themselves of adequate sleep with consequences that include fatigue, poor decision making, and increased risk of accidents. New research ... demonstrating that sleep is required for memory consolidation may convince people to take sleep more seriously," writes John Spiro, PhD, assistant editor of Nature Neuroscience in an editorial accompanying the studies.
The foggy thinking that accompanies sleep deprivation may be caused by a failure of memory consolidation, the process by which training or experience is translated into improvements in performance, say Robert Stickgold, PhD, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston.
The researchers put this theory to the test by training 18- to 25-year-old volunteers on a test that requires the user to identify specific letters and patterns as they are flashed briefly onto a video screen along with visual distractions.
After the initial training session, some of the volunteers were allowed to get a normal night's sleep, while others were kept awake until 9 p.m. the following evening, followed by two more nights of normal sleep. Some of the study participants were tested again within three hours of the first training session, while others were retested up to seven days later.
No one who was tested again on the same day had an improved score, but volunteers who enjoyed a good night's sleep after the initial test showed significant improvements in their scores, and performance continued to improve with subsequent nights of sleep. In contrast, volunteers who were forced to pull an all-nighter immediately following the test did not show any significant improvements, even after two nights of catch-up ZZZs.
Remembrance of Things Past Requires a Good Night's Sleep
Nov. 21, 2000 -- Sleep may, as Shakespeare wrote, "knit the raveled sleeve of care," but it also appears to weave the threads of experience into a solid fabric of memory and learning, say sleep researchers in the December issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.
In two separate studies, researchers from the U.S. and Germany report that when we lose sleep, we also may lose the ability to store memories acquired during the day -- even after we've repaid a sleep "debt."
In other words, the next time you're caught napping on the job, you can tell the boss that you're just trying to commit an important task to memory.
"The average person requires about eight hours of sleep per night, but many otherwise healthy people continually deprive themselves of adequate sleep with consequences that include fatigue, poor decision making, and increased risk of accidents. New research ... demonstrating that sleep is required for memory consolidation may convince people to take sleep more seriously," writes John Spiro, PhD, assistant editor of Nature Neuroscience in an editorial accompanying the studies.
The foggy thinking that accompanies sleep deprivation may be caused by a failure of memory consolidation, the process by which training or experience is translated into improvements in performance, say Robert Stickgold, PhD, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston.
The researchers put this theory to the test by training 18- to 25-year-old volunteers on a test that requires the user to identify specific letters and patterns as they are flashed briefly onto a video screen along with visual distractions.
After the initial training session, some of the volunteers were allowed to get a normal night's sleep, while others were kept awake until 9 p.m. the following evening, followed by two more nights of normal sleep. Some of the study participants were tested again within three hours of the first training session, while others were retested up to seven days later.
No one who was tested again on the same day had an improved score, but volunteers who enjoyed a good night's sleep after the initial test showed significant improvements in their scores, and performance continued to improve with subsequent nights of sleep. In contrast, volunteers who were forced to pull an all-nighter immediately following the test did not show any significant improvements, even after two nights of catch-up ZZZs.
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