Division of Sleep Medicine @ Harvard Medical School
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Publication"Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter", Scientific American Mind
August 31, 2008
Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter. Stickgold R, Ellenbogen JM. Scientific American Mind. 2008 Aug.
In a study published in the August issue of Scientific American Mind, Robert Stickgold, PhD of the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen, MD, MMSc of the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that during slumber, the brain engages in data analysis, from strengthening memories to solving problems. Sleep makes memories stronger, and it even appears to weed out irrelevant details and background information so that only the important pieces remain.
These findings have potential implications for questions concerning nighttime cognition and understanding sleep to better understand memory.
In a study published in the August issue of Scientific American Mind, Robert Stickgold, PhD of the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen, MD, MMSc of the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that during slumber, the brain engages in data analysis, from strengthening memories to solving problems. Sleep makes memories stronger, and it even appears to weed out irrelevant details and background information so that only the important pieces remain.
These findings have potential implications for questions concerning nighttime cognition and understanding sleep to better understand memory.
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