Sleep, the good one stimulates deepening and memory
“If you learn something in the evening, this information awakens during sleep while negative thoughts make us wake up earlier than we would like and ruin our sleep by making it less profound”Are some of the indications that emerged in the MemoSleep project funded by Horizon and the EU at the University of Friborg. On the other hand, however, positive thoughts, it is found in the research, can also reactivate the circuits in the brain thus improving sleep. Certainly a good sleep is totally refreshing, and this assumption was also known to the ancients. What was less known is that the sleep acts as a stimulus for learning and memory. Above all, it seems that the first stage of deep and slow-wave sleep is extremely important. The young university students who took part in the project received about 50 euros for each night spent in the rooms of the laboratory. They just had to sleep connected to an EEG that tracked brain waves. Their muscles were also under observation to understand when sleep began and especially in some sleep state the maximum relaxation was produced.
Sleep, relaxation strategies do not affect sleep
In this regard and second different relaxation strategies may help people fall asleep better, but they don’t affect the quality of sleep afterward. Some tests even involved listening to different hypnotic induction audios. Subjects spent more time in the deeper slow-wave sleep phase after listening to audios. And this, according to the researchers, because there was a greater reactivation of the soothing and calming thoughts heard in the audios. Project outcomes could help patients with insomnia, who could not only fall asleep faster but also rest better. The same evidence could help people who have difficulty sleeping after, for example, post-traumatic stress.
Sleep, the importance of the hippocampus and brainstem
The seahorse-shaped part of the brain, called the hippocampus, is vital when it comes to learning and memory. Mice are used very often to investigate the behavior of their hippocampus in learning and sleeping. Their intuitive abilities are often surprising. As part of a second project called Dream always supported by the European Union, it was discovered that another part of the brain, the brainstem plays a fundamental role in the interaction with the hippocampus and is activated before it. The brain stem appears to be activated allowing the hippocampus to reactivate memories in the different stages of sleep. What has been found, among other things, is that sleep allows the brain to reproduce everyday events and store them as long-term memories. It has been observed that cells are activated during sleep in the same order as they were in the learning process, although in sleep they are more compressed. The finding is surprising as it indicates that the brain stem can stimulate and modify memory formation. It has been found in both rodents and primates, and it seems likely that the brain mechanism is the basic one in mammals, including humans. This research, in addition to being essential for understanding the basic functioning of the brain, could also bring clinical benefits for all those diseases that affect memory.
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