Sleep should help learning, memory

There are many situations in which you have to learn new things that you will need to recall later.When you are a student, there is material for classes that you learn to prepare for recalling that information on exams (and hopefully later in life as well). As an adult, there are often new information you need to remember at work, in volunteer organizations, and for your hobbies.

When quite a bit of research on memory has demonstrated that distributing your practice helps you learn. Don’t forget that the more that you spread out your study time, the better you are likely to remember information later, compared to cramming all of your study time into one session.

No matter how studies have also been interested in whether sleep matters for learning. Reality is that research suggests that if you study new material and then sleep, you remember the information better than if you study new material and stay awake for an equivalent amount of time.

What happens when you combine these concepts? That is, does it matter whether you sleep in between the study sessions you do?

This question was addressed in a paper in the October 2016 issue of Psychological Science by Stephanie Mazza, Emilie Bergier, Marie-Paule Gustin, Zumrut Kasikci, Olivier Koenig, Thomas Toppino, and Michel Magnin.

Participants were tested in three groups.Please note that all of them studied a list of 16 Swahili words and had to give their translation.The study was done in France, so the participants replied with the French meaning of the words.

It is tempting to know that to study the word list, participants first saw each word paired with its meaning.Then, they went through the listing and typed in the meaning. Each items or each itme they got correct was removed from the study list. For each item they got wrong, the correct definition was given, and was added to the list for the next round of study. The study period ended when the participant responded correctly once to each of the 16 items.

Learn that a control group, studied these words in the evening and then came back to the lab 12 hours later when they had slept. They were tested on the words the next morning. They also came back and were tested once again one week later and six months later.

Well The Sleep group studied the words in the evening and came back to the lab 12 hours later after sleeping . They studied the words a second time. In the second study trial, they were not shown the definitions of the words again on the first round. Instead, they started by recalling the definitions of the words and then continuing to study the ones they got wrong. This group also came back a week later and six months later for tests of the words.

The No Sleep group studied the words in the morning and came back to the lab 12 hours later without sleep in between study sessions. They studied the words a second time (just like the Sleep group). They were then tested a week later and six months later.

The results show the importance of sleep. The Sleep group and the Control group both remembered the words better 12 hours later (as measured by the performance on the first trial of the second study session) than the No Sleep group. That is, consistent with previous research, sleeping after a study session leads to better recall than not sleeping.

If that’s not enough the Sleep group actually relearned all of the words in the second study session faster than the No Sleep group. No matter how the second round of studying was more efficient for people who had slept than for those who had not.

They found that at both the one week and six month tests, the Sleep Group did best. That is, studying a second time after sleeping led people to recollect the words better after a delay than either studying twice without sleeping or studying only once and sleeping after the test. The performance in those two conditions was about the same.

This research suggests that spreading out your study time benefits goodness of learning, but you should make sure that you sleep in between study sessions. Sleep is well-known to help consolidate memories. When you study before bedtime a second time, you are giving yourself a chance to allow sleep to consolidate your memories twice—once after the first study session and again after the second.

Picture the peaceful sleeper nestled under the covers: body at rest, breathing and pulse slow and steady. You may find out that beneath that serene surface, the brain is hard at work, processing the events of the day. It sorts and files, makes connections, and even solves problems

Several recent studies strengthen the connection between sleep and learning.

Reactivate and improve memory skills. A 2010 Harvard study suggested that dreaming may reactivate and form recently learned material, which would help improve memory and boost performance. However in the study, volunteers learned to navigate a complex maze. Now during a break, some were allowed to nap for 90 minutes, others weren’t. When the voluntary persons tackled the maze again, only the few who dreamed about it during their naps did better.

Interval sleeping. In another Harvard study, college student volunteers learned pairs of unrelated words, worked on a maze puzzle, and copied an intricate figure. Needless to say all were tested on their work, and half were allowed to nap for 45 minutes. It happened that during a retest, napping boosted the performance of volunteers who initially did well on the test, but didn’t help those who scored poorly the first time around.

Reorganizing micro naps. As for many people, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find 45 minutes to nap. In a German study, a six-minute short sleep helped volunteers recall a list of 30 words they had memorized earlier.

Rem sleep creates creativity. Very often naps are too short to let a person drop the deep phase of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This is the phase during which most dreams happen. Well California researchers gave volunteers a series of creative problems in the morning and asked them to spend the day mulling solutions before being tested late in the afternoon. Half the volunteers were asked to stay up during the day, the others were encouraged to nap. Those whose naps were long enough to enter REM sleep for a while did 40% better on the test than nappers who didn’t get any REM sleep and non-nappers. You would find it interesting that rather than simply boosting alertness and attention, REM sleep allowed the brain to work creatively on the problems that had been posed before sleep.

Science tells that napping won’t make you smart or assure success, but it can help improve your memory and solve problems. It happens that sleeping well at night, and long enough, is associated with good health. The combination is a two-step approach that should give everyone something to sleep on.