New studies suggest sleep is vital to learning and memory

Wed, 10/24/2007 - 14:28 - NLN

Scientists have been trying to determine why people need sleep for years. They know that sleep loss makes you more reckless, more emotionally fragile, less able to concentrate and almost certainly more vulnerable to infection.

They know, too, that some people get by on as few as three hours a night, even less, and that there are hearty souls who have stayed up for more than week without significant health problems.

Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggests that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking.

Read full story in International Herald Tribune