After a particularly creative night's sleep , Paul Mac Carteny rushed to the piano at his girlfriend Jane Asher's house to scribble down a tune he had heard in a dream. That song, "Yesterday", would become a Beatles Classic.
Few can claim their slumbering hours are as productive or as lucrative, but "sleeping on the problem" does work. By Scanning the brains of volunteers, they found that a good night's shut-eyes seems to stimulate new brain connections that promote learning by turning a weak memory into a stronger one.
Sophie Schwartze, from the University of Geneva, gave volunteers the task of remembering unknown faces or using a joy stick to follow a moving dot on a computer screen. Some were then allowed to sleep while others were not. They repeated the same tasks the next day while having their brains scanned lowing a new experience effects of learning from the experience", says Schwartz.
The Brian changes were highly localized and relevant to task the volunteer had been set. For example, the researchers observed changes in the unknown faces task. Schwartz will report her study today at the Forum of European Neuroscience meeting in Geneva.
In future, she wants to find out whether by understanding the brain changes involved, the learning effect can be boosted and asses how sleep disorders affect emotional cognitive Functioning
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