Did you know that…..
A recent study (Feb 2011), published by The Journal of Neuroscience, shows that the mere expectancy that a memory will be used in a future determines whether or not sleep significantly benefits consolidation of this memory?.
In that study the person had to learn “word paired associates” before retention periods of sleep or wakefulness. The scientifics found that post-learning sleep compared with wakefulness produced a strong improvement at delayed retrieval only if the subjects had been informed about the retrieval test after the learning period. But if they had not been informed, retrieval after retention sleep did not differ from that after the wake retention interval.
The conclusion was the following : sleep preferentially benefits consolidation of memories that are relevant for future behavior, presumably through a SWS (slow-wave sleep ) dependent reprocessing of these memories.
That study, entitled “Sleep Selectively Enhances Memory Expected to Be of Future Relevance”, has been carried out by Germans and Swiss investigators of Department of Neuroendocrinology, Lübeck, (Susanne Diekelmann) and the Department of Medical Psychology, Tübingen University, (Jan Born).
