This article is about sleep and its importance to memory. Sleep has been found to assist in the consolidation of memory coming from newly acquired information. Sleep provides the condition for the optimal consolidation to happen. The time and length of the sleep, as well as the conditions under which the learning or passing of the new information takes place will determine the success of the consolidation. Consolidation of memory, on its part, is essential because it has been found to improve both the quality and also the quantity of the memory patterns. This article reviews several other articles which have examined different aspects of sleep and how they affect memory consolidation. The following is a look at five of the articles reviewed by this article.
The length of time in which one sleeps has a significant level of benefit on the memory consolidation process. A period f 8hours of sleep has been observed to greatly benefit memory, but also shorter periods of sleep time, for example, a period of one to two hours sleep or even just a six minutes nap greatly benefit memory consolidation. The longer the sleep duration, though, the greater the effect on memory consolidation. The exact duration of sleep that optimizes memory consolidation, however, can not be pinpointed. The period between learning and sleeping also plays a big role in determining the overall impact of sleep on memory consolidation. Shorter periods of time between learning and sleep have been found to yield higher levels of memory consolidation, although just like sleep duration, studies have been unable to pinpoint the exact duration of time between learning and sleeping that will maximize memory consolidation (Diekelmann & Born, 2010).
Sleep changes memory representations quantitatively and qualitatively
Consolidation of memory which occurs during sleep leads to strengthening of memory as well as the quality of the memory. The strengthening is exhibited in the ability to resist the influence of a similar task. Declarative and procedural memory tasks or tests tend to show the stabilizing effects of sleep on memory. Studies found out that sleep enabled individuals to be better at linking ideas or things together after sleep, than before sleep. Individuals were, for example, able to comprehend complex mathematical skills like calculus faster after sleep than before sleep (Diekelmann & Born, 2010). The amount of improvements in performance cannot be pinpointed because the study conclusions can only be subjective to the level of understanding or performance before sleep.
Interacting or competing memory systems
Some studies have led to conclusions that there is interactions between procedural and declarative memory systems during memory consolidation that has been aided by sleep. The studies carried out found that the respondents were able to generate explicitly the SRTT which was implicitly trained. The subjects were also not able to improve on their implicit procedural skill after sleep and thus the proof that there is interaction between the procedural and the declarative memory systems during sleep. The proponents of the opposite of this thinking argue that there is no interactions during sleep. The basis of their line of argument stems from experiments that show that declarative learning of words just after learning a procedural skill will prevent off-line improvement of that particular skill, unless the subjects sleeps between the periods that he learns and when he is re-tested. This shows that there is independent consolidation of memories and that there is interference during waking up from sleep and disengagement during sleep (Diekelmann & Born, 2010).
Explicit versus implicit encoding
The method used to encode a message is the determinant of whether the memory gains access to sleep dependent consolidation. The test used here is the serial reaction time task (SRTT). When this test was carried out, it was observed that if the test was administered explicitly, individuals exhibited a higher rate of sleep induced speeding performance. Sleep generally has more positive effects on knowledge that was explicitly learned and one which was difficult to encode or which was only weakly encoded. If the memories are behaviorally important, the benefits of sleep were also more (Diekelmann & Born, 2010).
Reactivation of memory traces during sleep
`The first findings about the re-activation of memory traces were discovered in rats. This was found to occur in the hippocampus. In humans, the reactivations occur mostly during the short wave sleep and almost non- existent during random eye movements. This happens during the early hours of learning and in very few recorded neurons. While reactivations when one is awake occur do not always happen in the order in which experienced, reactivations during the short wave sleep always happens in the order in which they were experienced. Characteristically they will be noisier, erratic and will happen more quickly. This process takes place in the thalamus, the striatum and the neocortex parts of the brain (Diekelmann & Born, 2010).
How findings are important in everyday life
The findings discussed in the above paragraphs are very important in the day to day life of individuals. Firstly, students may find the findings about sleep improving the quantity and quality of memory, quite useful. Students go through a curriculum that is rigorous and tasking. A sharp memory is needed to master the concepts taught so that he may answer exam questions correctly. Some concepts have proven to be problematic to many students. One of them is calculus. The studies, however, indicate that if the concept of calculus is taught, and the student does his best to understand it but fails, he may find that he will grasp the concept after a period of sleep. This will greatly help his academic performance. The second importance of these findings in our daily live involves the importance of the length of time of sleep. The studies show that the longer the duration of the sleep, the better the memory consolidation. This concept is also very important in education. Students face examinations every term or semester. Most students do not try to master the concepts they are taught in class at the beginning of the semester, rather, they wait to try to master the concepts within a very short time after the exams have been announced. As such, some students read throughout the whole night on the eve of an exam, expecting to master the concepts. This is impossible and the student will most likely fail because he will not master even the simple concepts which he would have mastered had he taken time to sleep.
This research expands upon what we have learned in class in two ways. Firstly, the use of diagrams to aid in explanations is very good. The pictures really aid one in understanding what is being talked about. The active synaptic consolidation process has been well illustrated making it easier and fun to comprehend. Other areas of the research have also been explained with the aid of diagrams making it easier to understand the core of the concept. The second way in which this research has expounded on the class teachings is to specifically focus on sleep and all its effects on memory. This is very specific, whereas the book does not go to such a specific extend. I should add that the topic on sleep has really benefitted me as a student.
This article covers a wide range of issues relating to sleep and memory. The reviews on this paper, however, lacked final conclusions on the exact number of hours that, for example, maximizes sleep induced memory consolidation. This provides an opportunity to psychologists and other professionals a challenge to come up with a single value or a range of values through which the process is optimal.
References
Diekelmann, S. & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Reviews. (Vol. 10,pp 114-
126). Macmillan publishers.
