A good night's sleep is the key to remembering

Abstract

Researchers from the Sleep and Neuroimaging Research Laboratory at Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA, USA) have shown that a good night's sleep improves memory consolidation by inducing plastic changes in the human brain. Sleep is known to play an important part in memory consolidation and processing—babies are thought to spend so much time asleep because they are constantly taking in new information that needs to be consolidated and stored as memories in the brain. “The data suggest that a night of sleep reorganises the representation of a memory within the human brain”, explains author Matthew Walker.