Topic - Sleep On It. Experiments have shown that if you study for a test and then go right to sleep, the early stages of sleep help to consolidate the memory of that recently-learned information.
These early stages are when slow wave sleep occurs. This is the sleep phase that continues to process the information even though you’re asleep and not paying conscious attention to the data.
Interplay between areas of the brain help to seal the information into the hippocampus which is the memory center.
The results of the experiments highlight the need for healthy sleep habits especially for school-age kids who gain the greatest memory benefit from sleeping.
Older folks don’t enjoy that same memory bump from a good night’s sleep. This is because sleep cycles speed up and sleep becomes more fragmented with age.
Older people need to develop compensatory memory strategies to offset age-related memory decline.
Regardless, both young and old need healthy sleep patterns.
