Good Sleep Wakes Up Memory

Getting shut-eye before tests boosted performance, study found

By Juhie Bhatia
HealthDay Reporter

Related Encyclopedia • Acoustic Neurinoma • Alzheimer's Disease • Bell's Palsy • Brain and Spinal Cord Magnetic Resonance Imaging More... Related Healthscout Videos Brain Surgery with Water? Howard: The Helping Hand for Stroke Survivors Breakthrough Coma Reversal With Glue MS Discovery More... Related Animations • Alzheimer's Disease Video Animation • Erectile Dysfunction • What is a Heart Attack? More... Related Drug Information • Actonel • Adderal XR • Concerta • Coumadin More... Related News Articles • Health Tip: Talking to a Person With Alzheimer's Disease • Talk Therapy Proves Effective for Terminal Cancer Patients • Gene Therapy in Rats Reduces Cocaine Use • Metabolic Syndrome Triggered by Overeating, Not Obesity More...

WEDNESDAY, April 25 (HealthDay News) -- Besides helping you feel well-rested, getting your zzz's may also sharpen your memory, a new study shows.

Researchers found that sleep not only protects memories from outside interferences, it also helps strengthen them.

Text Continues Below

---

"There was a very large benefit of sleep for memory consolidation, even larger than we were anticipating," said study author Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, an associate neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and a postdoctoral fellow in sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School.

The research is scheduled to be presented May 2 at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Boston.

In the study, the researchers focused on sleep's impact on "declarative" memories, which are related to specific facts, episodes and events.

"We sought to explore whether sleep has any impact on memory consolidation, specifically the type of memory for facts and events and time," Ellenbogen said. "We know that sleep helps boost memory for procedural tests, such as learning a new piano sequence, but we're not sure, even though it's been debated for 100 years, whether sleep impacts declarative memory."

The study involved 48 people between the ages of 18 and 30. These participants had normal, healthy sleep routines and were not taking any medications. They were all taught 20 pairs of words and asked to recall them 12 hours later. However, the participants were divided evenly into four groups with different circumstances for testing: sleep before testing, wake before testing, sleep before testing with interference, or wake before testing with interference.

Two of the groups (the wake groups) were taught the words at 9 a.m. and then tested on the pairings at 9 p.m., after being awake all day. The other two groups (the sleep groups) learned the words at 9 p.m., went to sleep, and were then tested at 9 a.m.

Page:  1 | 2 | Next >>