Sunday, November 19, 2006
Brain Stimulation During Sleep Boosts Memory
University of Luebeck (Germany), 16 November: Applying a gentle current to the brain during a particular phase of sleep can enhance memory, a study online this week in Nature suggests.
It’s thought that sleep helps the brain to consolidate memories, so certain tasks learned before a nap are better remembered than those learned without a subsequent snooze. Jan Born and colleagues now show that applying an electric current with a certain frequency to the scalp during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep can induce a memory enhancement of around 8% on a word-learning task.
Five bouts of the current, which was an oscillating potential similar to that seen naturally in slow wave sleep, were applied over half an hour. If the frequency of the current or the phase of sleep in which it was applied were altered, the memory enhancement was not seen. And the effect is all the more impressive because the effect was seen in medical students, who are presumed to be pretty good at remembering words already.
(ResearchSEA)
It’s thought that sleep helps the brain to consolidate memories, so certain tasks learned before a nap are better remembered than those learned without a subsequent snooze. Jan Born and colleagues now show that applying an electric current with a certain frequency to the scalp during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep can induce a memory enhancement of around 8% on a word-learning task.
Five bouts of the current, which was an oscillating potential similar to that seen naturally in slow wave sleep, were applied over half an hour. If the frequency of the current or the phase of sleep in which it was applied were altered, the memory enhancement was not seen. And the effect is all the more impressive because the effect was seen in medical students, who are presumed to be pretty good at remembering words already.
(ResearchSEA)
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