Spending enough time in bed is essential in helping to keep memories alive, a team of researchers from the University of Lubeck have found. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, revealed that sleep can be effective at helping an individual to remember all sorts of material, since the brain is better placed to ward off attempts to corrupt a recent memory during sleep. The brain's neocortex - which is widely considered to be the brain's hard drive - is better able to store memories more permanently following a period of resting, the experts noted. Susanne Diekelmann from the University of Lubeck, lead author of the study, said: "Reactivation of memories had completely different effects on the state of wakefulness and sleep." After only forty minutes of sleep, significant portions of memory were already 'downloaded' and stored in the more permanent areas of the neocortex, where they "could no longer be disrupted by new information that is encoded in the hippocampus (the more temporary store in the brain)", she explained. As a result, Ms Diekelmann explained that the findings could have implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders. "Reactivation of newly learned memories during ensuing sleep could then help consolidate the desired therapeutic effects for the long-term," she added.
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