Good sleep boosts memory, research

The report said that positive effects of sleep on memory is very familiar in that that it helps us to remember the things we did, heard or said, the previous night.

In the research, they noticed that over the span of 12 hours subjects couldn’t remember information if they stayed awake, but a night’s sleep encouraged entry to those tinges of memory that had earlier been hard to regain.

The University of Exeter scientists and fellow researchers think this is because, while we are asleep, the brain goes over stored information, making it easier to access it when waking up.

Tight sleep can make our memories more accessible, according to a study by University of Exeter in Britain and the Basque Centre for Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Spain.

Researchers tracked memories for novel, made-up words learnt either prior to a night’s sleep, or an equivalent period of wakefulness. Participants were asked to recall words immediately after exposure to the new words, and then again after a period of sleep or wakefulness.

They did have a study regarding this matter participated by 123 individuals who underwent an immediate test and a 12-hour retest as stated by The DailyMail.

Who would have thought that sleep can enhance memory and improve mental health?

However, a new study has shown that sleep is as important as one can think of.

“Sleep nearly doubles our chances of remembering previously unrecalled material”.

Though much research is still needed, they did find out however that sleep does help retrieve uncalled memories that may prevent memory loss compared to daytime wakefulness.

“The idea that memories could also be sharpened and made more vivid and accessible overnight, however, is yet to be fully explored”.

Dr Dumay said it means memories can be “sharpened overnight”, and he believes the boost comes from the hippocampus, an inner structure of the temporal lobe unzipping recent episodes and replaying them to regions of the brain originally involved in their capture – this would lead the subject to effectively re experience the major events of the day.