Quality of Sleep Determines Where the Brain Stores Memories

As time passes, our memories are transferred to different parts of the brain in order to ideally store our past experiences. While scientists have known that sleep plays an important role in helping consolidate memories, a new study investigates the role of sleep a step further, and shows how one night of sleep can lead to changes in brain activity six months after an event has occurred.

Their research shows that a good night’s sleep after learning word pairs enhances memory processing in the hippocampus, and also induces information transfer between the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). This transfer serves to consolidate memories, helping new memories become stable and immune to interfering stimuli.

Our work shows how the development of a trace left by new memories depends on sleep

This is the first time we could confirm in humans a number of predictions based on animal research.