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Viva la nap consolidates long-term memory

Want to submit your memory to a restorative care? The winning recipe does not contain phosphorus or supplements, but surely a more healthy and pleasant nap. Ninety minutes of sleep during the day, shows a study published in Nature Neuroscience, promote the consolidation of long-term memory, or to that form of permanent memory destined to disappear never to fade or only after many years.

So far the good news of the clearance of the afternoon naps. But the Israeli researchers in the Center for Brain and Behavior Research at the University of Haifa have also prepared a cold shower. In practice with their research are trying to unravel the mechanisms underlying memory consolidation induced by sleep, and play them back artificially.
The learning of a task may be considered as two distinct phases, the performance improvement that occurs during the execution of the task is to refine the next linked to processes of memory consolidation, i.e. the transformation of the memory of a given experience into something more solid and durable.

One can distinguish two different forms of this type of memory: the memory of the “what” (e.g. what happened today) and the memory of “how” (e.g. how to do something, like driving etc…) In the early stages post-learning processes underlying the consolidation of experience, can be disturbed in various ways, from interfering chemical, physical or electrical (interference behavioral retrograde), which may act but only within a time window limited to 5 -6 hours after the training phase.

The processes of memory consolidation, for their part involving the expression of genes and the synthesis of proteins that lead to alterations in synapses (synaptic consolidation). Study participants were initially instructed to learning a motor sequence, to be carried out with the thumb and forefinger of the non dominant hand (finger sequence task). One group was made to sleep for 90 minutes after the session of learning, but others remained awake.

The group that had lunch break, the evening ran perfectly the motor performance learned in the morning, unlike the other group. After a night of sleep, however, both groups showed the same level of performance of the motor task. This experiment therefore shows that the afternoon sleep memory consolidation produces a much more rapid and effective.

In a second experiment was evaluated instead’s influence on the mechanisms of sleep interference. Participants in the experiment were subjected to the usual seat of learning of a motor task, half of them followed by 90 minutes of sleep, the other by a period of wakefulness.

This second experiment demonstrates for the first time that the afternoon sleep protects the memory of “how” of the interference and facilitates consolidation. Are not yet known, however, the mechanisms by which sleep can produce these effects. Until then we will be able to reproduce artificially continue to enjoy the benefits of an afternoon nap. With’s excellent excuse to strengthen our memory of how.

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