Sleep, Learning And Memory

Sleep, Learning And Memory.
Babies alter and preserve memories during those many naps they gather during the day, a new study suggests. "We discovered that sleeping shortly after erudition helps infants to retain memories over extended periods of time," said study maker Sabine Seehagen, a child and adolescent psychology researcher with Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. "In both of our experiments, only those infants who took an extended catch for at least half an hour within four hours after lore remembered the information". The study doesn't definitively confirm that the naps themselves advise the memories stick, but the researchers believe that is happening.

And "While people might assume that infants acquire knowledge best when they are wide awake, our findings suggest that the time just before infants go down for sleep can be a particularly valuable culture opportunity". Scientists have long linked more sleep to better memory, but it's been unclear what happens when babies throw away a significant amount of time sleeping. In the new study, researchers launched two experiments. In each one, babies venerable 6 months or 12 months were taught how to take away mittens from animal puppets.

Then some of the babies took a nap for a half-hour and some didn't. A sum of 216 babies were tested. Then the researchers tested the babies to see if they remembered how to get rid of the mittens either four or 24 hours later. The researchers found that only the babies who'd entranced naps after learning actually remembered what they'd learned, especially after 24 hours. Study father Seehagen said it's "quite unlikely" that the babies who didn't nap muse less because they were tired.

Still, she said more research is needed to confirm the results. So, how many naps do babies needfulness and how long should they be? "The small number of studies makes it difficult to make unalterable recommendations to parents," said Angela Lukowski, an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. However, "the deterrent for parents seems to be that napping after information may help infants remember information over time.

She added that naps of at least 30 minutes seem to be helpful, although there hasn't been much, if any, analyse into shorter naps. As for adults, don't tantalize about napping as a memory aid. "There are many studies in the literature showing the benefit of naps for adults, but adults do not difficulty to nap to retain new memories," said Rebecca Gomez, an allied professor of psychology at the University of Arizona tarike. The new study is published in this week's spring of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.