Sleep restores memories – Swedish Radio

Have you already forgotten something today? Slept well last night, so perhaps you will remember tomorrow. This is according to new British research.

Now there is scientific evidence that sleep not only protects our memories. Sleep helps us even to recreate what we already forgotten. This according to a new British study published in the journal Cortex. According to John Axelsson, sleep researchers at the Karolinska Institute, this is very exciting:

– Previously it has been shown that if you sleep so stabilizes it sticks, it does not forget things over time, but consolidates them, the to say, making them more stable over time. But now it appears here that sleep not only stabilizes the memories but also gives us access to the memories that we did not know that we had from the beginning.

new sleep study is based on two previous memory experiments. Test subjects were then learn different pretend words, which they would then try to remember immediately afterwards, but also after a long period of wakefulness or sleep. The conclusion then was that people remember better after they slept. But in this new study, which analyzed the results in more detail, it became clear that even words that subjects were not remembered after ordtestet – appeared to them, after they got to sleep.

According to the scientist behind the study almost doubled the chance to remember what once was forgotten, after a period of sleep.

Scientists known that sleep protects our memories for almost 100 years. Sleep helps us to remember, as the sleeping state gives us a chance to go through our life experiences, once again.

Earlier research has shown that it is during sleep that some memories are selected, and other screened out. And too little sleep makes us more sensitive to stress and thus becomes harder to remember things in the press about the sleep missed. It has also been discovered that the faster we go to sleep after that we learned something, the more likely it is that we remember.

But this new study thus shows that we and may even pick up memories that we thought was gone. And that’s actually a comforting thought, that what we learned really well from the beginning, may be something that we will remember for a good night’s sleep.

– It is very important to understand how we to work as best as humans and have injured memories and maybe sleep can help us understand how we can improve memory in people, so it is an important issue for both basic research into how memory works and how we learn, but even if you to help people who have disordered memory or memory problems, says John Axelsson, sleep researchers at the Karolinska Institute.

Niklas Zachrisson
niklas.zachrisson@sverigesradio.se

Reference:
Dumay N. “Sleep Note precisely Protects memories against forgetting, it is overpriced makes them more accessible “. Cortex 2015th