{"id":3272,"date":"2022-03-30T05:29:46","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T05:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therapeuticliteracycenter.com\/?p=3272"},"modified":"2024-11-02T19:29:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T19:29:10","slug":"the-role-of-sleep-in-learning-memory-and-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapeuticlearning.com\/the-role-of-sleep-in-learning-memory-and-health\/","title":{"rendered":"The Role of Sleep in Learning, Memory, and Health"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cI’ve always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.\u201d \u2015\u00a0David Benioff,\u00a0City of Thieves<\/i><\/p>\n
Recent findings in research studies related to sleep and learning lend support to some long-held hypotheses about why we sleep, what happens in the brain during sleep, and why it\u2019s important; especially for learning. In one area of research, the findings provide evidence for a long-held hypothesis that during sleep, the brain cleans itself (1). \u00a0Another series of reports illustrate why sleep is so much more important for a child\u2019s learning than it is for an adult. \u00a0The findings add a compelling new dimension to our current understanding of how sleep helps the brain reprocess newly learned information thus securing memories and learning (2).<\/p>\n
Seminal studies about sleep and learning have shown unequivocally that people trained to complete a procedural memory-based task showed improved performance when a period of sleep followed the training (3). \u00a0Even a nap in the middle of the day could benefit some learning. \u00a0But to understand what is actually happening in the brain when we sleep we\u2019ve had to wait on the right technological applications to allow us to peer into the brain and accurately measure activities and events during sleep.<\/p>\n