Trouble Sleeping? Memory Could Suffer, Research Reveals

Most medical professionals would agree that a good night’s sleep is very important. In fact, according to recent research, some memory problems attributed to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease might not be caused by these conditions at all.

Research from Uppsala University, Sweden, found that sleep does not only help form long-term memory, but also helps to ensure access to it during times of cognitive stress.

In the study that was published in the scientific journal SLEEP, researchers investigated the role of nocturnal sleep duration for this memory transfer, and how long-term memories formed by sleep remain accessible after stressful episodes.

In one experiment, subjects slept for half a night (4 hours) and in the other for a full night (8 hours). The next morning, subjects were asked to recall as many card pair locations on a computer screen they observed the previous night. What the researchers found was that half a night of sleep was as powerful as a full night of sleep to form long-term memories for the learned card pair locations.

However, the study also revealed that stress had an impact on the participants’ ability to recall these memories by about 10 percent. In contrast, no such stress-induced impairment was seen when the same subjects were allowed to sleep for a full night.

For more information about this research, visit http://www.uu.se/en/media/press-releases/press-release/?id=2778&area=3,8&typ=pm&lang=en. 

 

Each Home Instead Senior Care^® franchise office is independently owned and operated.