Rest and remember better

We all know that sleep is very important for our health and wellbeing.

Previous studies have also revealed the importance of sleep in consolidating our memories that we make when we are awake. Sleep also preserves the brain’s ability to learn new things in the future.

However, new research has shown that a restful wakefulness too can support memory consolidation but it is not yet known how exactly a quiet rest benefits memories and whether it affects the fine details of new memories.

The results show that participants who took a 10 minute rest after viewing photos of everyday items were better at discriminating these photos from similar lure photos.

Researchers from the University in Edinburgh designed a memory test and asked 60 young male and female participants with an average age of 21 years, to look at a set of photographs.

They were asked to distinguish photos and categorise them as “old” or “similar”.

If the participants were able to retain the fine nuances of the photos they would say that the photos are “similar”.

However, if only the obvious memories about the photos were stored, participants would miss the subtle differences and would classify them as “old”.

If the photos are new and not presented before they would categorise them as “new”.

The results show that participants who took a 10 minute rest (awake quiescence) after viewing photos of everyday items were better at discriminating these photos from similar lure photos than those who were engaged in an unrelated perceptual task for 10 minutes.

This suggests that taking rest protects the finer details of new memories than being engaged in a task.

Participants who rested stored more detailed memories than those who did not rest.

However, the study did not reveal how rest helps our brain strengthen and store new memories.

Further research is necessary to understand whether quiet resting only allows us to retain more information, or whether it also helps us to retain more detailed memories, according to the researchers.

Time spent resting is good for our wellbeing. But if you want to remember new things and retain all the finer details, then a 10 minute quiet rest time – without falling into sleep- is all you need.

Source: Nature