Our brains have an amazing job while we sleep: they save all of the day’s events as memories. But how does this happen? A new study has finally shown us the process in action.
Imagine being able to help your brain make stronger memories while you sleep! This is what a group of researchers achieved in their recent study.
They did this by carefully sending signals to specific parts of the brain of their sleeping volunteers.
Who Participated in the Study?
The volunteers were all people who have a serious illness called epilepsy. They agreed to be part of the study while they were being monitored for their seizures.
“This study helps us understand how the brain saves memories during sleep,” said Anna Schapiro, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who wasn’t involved in the study but had been hoping to see similar research.
How Are Memories Stored?
When something happens during the day, it’s first recorded in a part of the brain called the hippocampus.
Then, while we’re sleeping, the brain processes these memories and sends them to another region called the neocortex.
Here, the memories are stored for the long term. Once stored, we can pull these memories back out later on.
How Was the Study Conducted?
The study’s senior author, Itzhak Fried, a brain surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, explained that sleep is still a bit of a mystery. He said, “A lot of things are happening during sleep.”
In his work with people who have epilepsy, Fried often puts small devices called electrodes in their brains.
He monitors them for a few days to see where their seizures start. While they’re waiting for seizures, he asks them to join his research about memory.
For this study, which was published in Nature Neuroscience, Fried and his team looked at the brain activity of these patients during deep sleep.
This is when memories are thought to be processed and stored. They decided to send signals to the brain areas involved in a synchronized way, like a conductor leading an orchestra.
Before they went to sleep, volunteers were shown pairs of pictures of famous people and animals.
The next morning, those who had the synchronized signals during sleep were better at remembering which images they had seen before and which were new.
What Does This Mean?
Lack of sleep makes brain cells work slower, and this is why we don’t function as well during the day when we don’t get enough sleep.
People with diseases that affect memory, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, often have trouble sleeping. This can make their disease worse.
Fried hopes that by learning more about the link between sleep and memory, scientists could one day help people with memory problems.
He compared the effect of the signals to a hearing aid that makes sounds louder to help people hear. “It would be interesting if you could amplify memory,” he said.
In theory, a similar method might also be used to find the part of the brain that holds a bad memory, like from war or abuse, and use signals to erase or change that memory.
Fried recently got a $7 million grant to study if artificial intelligence can help find and strengthen specific memories in the brain.
Currently, the technology to send signals to the brain requires complex surgery to put electrodes deep inside the brain.
“If this kind of technology could be made simpler and combined with artificial intelligence, it could become a powerful system that can help people,” Fried said.
If you care about sleep, please read studies about exercise that can help you sleep better, and this new drug could reduce symptoms of sleep apnea.
For more information about wellness, please see recent studies about drug that can treat sleep loss and insomnia, and results showing common sleep supplement may help boost memory function.
The study was published in Nature Neuroscience.
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