Some REM sleep can help you hold on to memories

If you want to hold on to yourmemories, then hit the sack for some deep sleep as a new study suggests so.

Researchers at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute (McGill University) and the University of Bern provided evidence that rapid eye movement ( REM ) sleep, the phase where dreams appear, is directly involved in memory formation, at least in mice.

Researcher Sylvain Williams said, “We already knew that newly acquired information is stored into different types of memories, spatial or emotional, before being consolidated or integrated,” adding “How the brain performs this process has remained unclear, until now. We were able to prove for the first time that REM sleep is indeed critical for normal spatial memory formation in mice.”

To test the long-term spatial memory of mice, the scientists trained the rodents to spot a new object placed in a controlled environment where two objects of similar shape and volume stand. Spontaneously, mice spend more time exploring a novel object than a familiar one, showing their use of learning and recall.