The role of sleep in memory consolidation is an ancient question dating back to the Roman rhetorician Quintilian in the first century A.D. Much research in the past decade has been dedicated to better understanding the interaction between sleep and memory. Yet little is understood.
At the molecular level, gene expression responsible for protein synthesis is increased during sleep in rats exposed to enriched environments, suggesting memory consolidation processes are enhanced, or may essentially rely, on sleep. Further, patterns of activity observed in rats during spatial learning are replayed in hippocampal neurons during subsequent sleep, further suggesting that learning may continue in sleep.
In humans, recent studies have demonstrated the benefits of sleep on declarative memory performance, thus giving a neurological basis to the old adage, "sleep on it." A night of sleep reportedly enhances memory for associations between word pairs. Similar overnight improvements on virtual navigation tasks have been observed, which correlate with hippocampal activation during sleep. Sleep deprivation, on the other hand, is known to produce deficits in hippocampal activation during declarative memory formation, resulting in poor subsequent retention. Thus, the absence of prior sleep compromises our capacity for committing new experiences to memory. These initial findings suggest an important, if not essential, role for sleep in the consolidation of newly formed memories.
See what we're tweeting about
6 Comments
Add Commentwhen does short term memory become long term memory?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdoes the subconcious store memories which cannot be accessed by stm but can be remembered long term ?as with dementia sufferers
okay when you were you talking about how when you have Alzheimer's and how they can't learn the names of present presidents but how they can remember previous ones such as Abe Lincoln.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about forgetting the names of their children, having no clue of who they are?... It's not like they're meeting them after the disease has kicked in.. It seems like that would be recalled just as well as remembering previous presidents. Why not?
excellant work , and i enjoyed them. are there more ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe matching shapes with numbers consistently gives wrong results , the rest 3 are fine. i know i score 100% but always test below average . could you chevk on this please /
thanks
anu
I also was surprised at my score on shapes and numbers matching. I thought I did better than I scored, certainly not 100% but I can't vouch for doing better than scored. I just felt better after that part of the test than my score would indicate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh I knew it, it’s a gullibility test! None can miss in that shapes & numbers test!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a gem from Study Information:
“Are there any risks?”
“We do not expect there to be any risks. Please keep in mind that you are free to end the experiment at any time”
That really was smooth! Yet it got to anu and nalosi.
Thanks anyway! I enjoyed it through out!
I am totally agreed with alison for the mechanism of momorizing (I don,t want to mention here the correct thing instead of memory). However,I would like to mention, first, Like any other you are making the same mistake of saying "Long term and short term Memories". To me it is false to say "memory" at all as this something else not memory. Secondly, you have mentioned mechanism but not the process why some of the informations are memorized and not the others and that what happen step by step when we realized some information. Third, if it is true that REM sleep help in consolidation of memory then why I can't never forget things like "next week I am going to be millinior" whether I am in sleep or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOther than above, Dear Alison I wish to pose a very simple question, HOw can I see or hear etc. (remember I I already know very well the censors-electromechanical signals etc. I request you to please visit my page on face book "Psychology Professionals". Iwish to share something with you. Thanks.
Haroon Baig