NEWS: NYTimes: Sleep Helps Memory, Study Shows

[janet paterson <janet313@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Study Shows Sleep Helps Memory

November 22, 2000 - BOSTON -- Forget about pulling an all-nighter before an 
exam -- a study suggests it's more important to get a good night's rest.

Harvard Medical School researchers, led by assistant professor of psychiatry 
Robert Stickgold, found that people who slept after learning and practicing a 
new task remembered more about it the next day than people who stayed up all 
night after learning the same thing.

The study, which will be published in the December issue of Nature 
Neuroscience, was released Tuesday.

The study is another piece in a growing body of evidence that suggests proper 
rest is necessary for learning.

"We think getting that first night's sleep starts the process of memory 
consolidation", Stickgold said. "It seems that memories normally wash out of 
the brain unless some process nails them down."

The 24 participants were trained to identify the orientation of three diagonal 
bars flashed for one-sixtieth of a second on a horizontal-striped computer 
screen.

Half of the participants went to sleep that night.

The others were kept awake until the second night of the study.

Both groups were allowed to sleep on the second and third nights.

On the fourth day, both groups were tested on how proficient they had become at 
identifying the orientation of the diagonal bars.

Those who slept on the first night performed better than they had the first day.

Those who didn't sleep did not improve

"We don't know a lot about sleep, but we do know that it's useful in terms of 
deciding what information is useful and what's superfluous and can be 
discarded", said Joseph Modrack, an assistant professor of sleep medicine at 
the University of Rochester. "This study makes a lot of sense."

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company



janet paterson, an akinetic rigid subtype parkie
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