Sleep well for good memory
A new research says that people who get enough sleep helps them to have stronger memories.
The study being published in the Current Directions in Psychological Science says sleep helps in picking out the emotional details and reuses the memories to help produce new and creative ideas.
The researchers measured the brain activity during sleep and found active those regions of the brain involved with emotion and memory.“Sleep is making memories stronger,” says Jessica D. Payne of the University of Notre Dame, who co-wrote the review with Elizabeth A. Kensinger of Boston College. “It also seems to be doing something which I think is so much more interesting, and that is reorganizing and restructuring memories.”
According to the researchers, a person who has a good night's sleep, if shown a wrecked car in the foreground, is likely to remember the emotional object like the palm trees in the background.
They have also measured brain activity during sleep and found that regions of the brain involved with emotion and memory consolidation are active.
“In our fast-paced society, one of the first things to go is our sleep,” Payne says. “I think that’s based on a profound misunderstanding that the sleeping brain isn’t doing anything.” The brain is busy. It’s not just consolidating memories; it’s organizing them and picking out the most salient information. She thinks this is what makes it possible for people to come up with creative, new ideas.
“I give myself an eight-hour sleep opportunity every night. I never used to do that—until I started seeing my data,” she says. People who say they’ll sleep when they’re dead are sacrificing their ability to have good thoughts now, she says. “We can get away with less sleep, but it has a profound effect on our cognitive abilities.”