I read an interesting article in The Economist that describes the relationship between sleep and retaining information and new memories. It basically adds new momentum to believers of the power-snooze, something I practice on busy weekends.
The research was presented in this article from the Feb 25th edition.
The basic premise is that putting things into permanent memory requires a series of steps. These steps are performed during different phases of the first 90 to 100 minutes of stage 2 non-rem sleep. Normally this happens once a day when we sleep, however a Siesta enables an early execution of the process dramatically improving memory performance each day.
The memory management process for the human brain described in the article can be summarized as follows:
- Store the memory in temporary storage (This is the act of actually experiencing what it is we are going to remember)
- Move the memory into long term storage, creating space for new temporary memories
- Associate the memory with other memories in long term storage, improving our ability to reflect back on the memory and associate it with other memories
The last two steps occur in the first 90 minutes when we sleep. The interesting observation or conclusion is that sleep actually does two important things.
- Allows you to remember new factual things by clearing up temporary memory stroage space
- Allows you to use your new memories more effectively by linking them in with other memories
By sleeping mid-day we actually create more room for new memories in the afternoon and establish permanent context for those memories captured during the morning.
If this is all true as suggested by the study, then it would seem pretty silly not to try to sleep after an important learning session, and possibly during breaks between research and writing any sort of document that is going to build upon your established knowledge and experience.
Immediately I think back to the number of times that lack of sleep (often due to celebration and “unloading”) has immediately followed a key learning (exams, sports championships, project go-lives, weddings, conferences, presentations) and the impact this may have had on my retention of experiences to date. There would seem to be a lifestyle correlation between this study, and one that I recently read suggesting that our ability to learn and retain information (outside of language related things) improves mid-life.
A second observation I made is that the behaviour is not unlike certain aspects of computer operating system memory management which has the concept of short term storage (RAM) and long term storage (Disk), and a process that manages availability of short term storage by writing out to long term storage during idle cycles to prevent the risk of data loss or poor performance from running out of short term memory.
The bottom line is that this is just one more reason to get more sleep. Perhaps if you have a snooze immediately following reading this article, you will actually remember why sleep is soo important. (Why they do not suggest this in the The Economist, I am not sure).
A smart professor might actually find a way to insert a siesta in between an important lecture and a following related lab session to ensure maximum benefit from this study.
