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Tuesday, May 18, 2004Before long, some labs noticed that amounts of REM sleep increased as animals learned various tasks but went back to normal after tasks got mastered. What's more, experiments that deprived animals of REM sleep by disrupting them during this sleep stage found that they didn't learn as well as animals that got in plenty of dreaming. But the idea that sleep might aid smarts didn't catch fire. "Sleep wasn't supposed to be for that. It was supposed to be for restoration," recalls Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Ontario, who has studied sleep and learning for over 30 years. ...They've also realized that certain kinds of learning seem more linked to sleep than others. Memorizing lists of words or facts--what's called "declarative" memory--doesn't seem all that dependent on sleep. But scientists have lately gathered compelling evidence that people's "how to" learning, or "procedural memory," gets a boost from a bout of sleep. See, sleeping with your head on your textbook can pay off! posted by Sydney on 5/18/2004 07:59:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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