During a night’s slumber, the body enters a period of regulation and balance within its systems. It is accounted that most of this rejuvenation happens in the brain. During sleep, a fifth of the body’s blood is directed towards the brain. This relates to the conceived notion that sleep is for the brain. Within this state of reduced responsiveness, the brain is restoring the body’s energy resources, repairing damaged cells throughout the body, and more interestingly reinforcing memory formation.
Memory formation is an essential humane ability by which it is a strategic adaptation by any organism for survival. Average humans forget 40% of new material within the first 20 minutes after the initial exposure. This forgetting curve can be reduced with memory consolidation. Memory consolidation is the process of stabilization of memories to long-term. Long-term memory formation can be attributed to the hippocampus of the brain.
Sleep and memory are directly correlated due to the brain’s increased activity of consolidation during times of sleep. Studies show that electrical impulses in the brain during sleep are located at the relay stations responsible for memory formation. These electrical impulses differ throughout the different stages.
Like the impulses, the different stages of sleep—primarily slow-wave (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep— are correlated to the reconsolidation of different types of memories.
REM is responsible for procedural memory like memorizing keys on the piano or learning how to drive and SWS on the other hand, is responsible for declarative memory which are things like memorizing the periodic table or formulas for math. With this, sleep is deemed important for improving memory and it is recommended to sleep three hours after attempts for declarative memory and one hour for procedural memory.
Ultimately, the importance of sleep is not only beneficial for memory but for overall health. Insufficient amount of sleep can be linked to higher risks of health conditions like hypertension, atherosclerosis and diabetes.
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https://youtu.be/gedoSfZvBgE - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768102/
