Importance of Sleep on the Consolidation of Memories Essay Example

was noted that memory consolidation is activated when carrying out a motor skill, and this process persists even after practice has ceased. Astonishingly, test results later revealed that the skill level had improved. The study involved fifty-two healthy participants who had no history of sleep disruption or prior expertise in playing musical instruments or typing. A finger-to-thumb position task that followed a sequence was utilized by the researchers.

According to David N., the participants were assigned the task of performing it without looking at their hands. Both before and after sleep, their performances were recorded. The correlation coefficients revealed that those with a high amount of REM sleep displayed an improvement in their performance.

According to Neubauer (2009), individuals who suffer from a lack of sleep often experience forgetfulness whether it is caused by an excessively busy schedule or insomnia. In his article titled "Sleep and Memory," Neubauer provided evidence suggesting that post-learning sleep enhances both declarative and procedural memory (20). Additionally, he argued that sleep has the capacity to solidify memory, making it less susceptible to interference from other learning activities and enhancing memory performance in general. Neubauer supported this further by stating that even a daytime nap after learning improves subject's memory test performance when compared to individuals who were tested without any sleep during the same intervening period (20).

In 2000, Steffen Gais, Werner Plihal, Ullrich Wagner, and Jan Born conducted an experiment to study the impact of sleep on memory. The experiment focused on practicing visual texture discrimination and compared performance results between early sleep and late sleep, which included slow wave and rapid-eye movement sleep. According to the study, the task's improvement is

directly related to sleep. Results indicated that after early sleep, improvement in visual texture discrimination was evident and increased further after a whole night of sleep. However, late sleep alone did not show any improvement in the task.

Based on the findings of various experiments, it has been established that sleep-related processes stimulate the formation of procedural memory. Late REM sleep may also enhance memory formation, but only after two initial periods of sleep. In 2006, Steffen Gais1, Brian Lucas and Jan Born conducted a study to investigate the lasting effect of sleep on hippocampus-dependent declarative memory through two separate experiments. The first experiment involved examining whether sleeping within a few hours of learning in the evening improves memory consolidation. This study was conducted with 12 American high school students and had four different conditions.

As part of the study, participants were provided with a 24-pair vocabulary list in both English and German to memorize within 10 minutes under four distinct conditions. The results revealed a significant difference in the number of forgotten words between morning and evening learning sessions, as individuals who learned during the morning were able to remember more than those who learned later in the day. Additional investigations were conducted to identify whether this difference was due to sleep or time of day.

For the experiment, a group of fourteen high school boys was divided into two groups. The initial task was carried out by the first group, who then went home to sleep. Meanwhile, the second group completed the same task but did not get any sleep afterwards.

The second experiment revealed a noteworthy connection between the quantity of forgotten words in two circumstances.

The research demonstrated that when participants were sleep deprived, they forgot more words compared to when they slept, emphasizing the significance of sleep in memory consolidation as emphasized by Walker et al.

Fischer et al. corroborated Walker's findings on the significance of sleep for memory and plasticity by demonstrating that sufficient rest can enhance movement-related skills. Furthermore, David N. Neubauer linked sleep deprivation and related disorders to memory impairment.

According to research conducted by Steffen Gais, Werner Plihal, Ullrich Wagner, and Jan Born, even afternoon naps can boost memory-related performance. Similarly, an experiment by Steffen Gais1, Brian Lucas, and Jan Born found that sleep has a notable impact on declarative memory dependent on the hippocampus. Overall, sleep has proven to be an effective tool for improving memory and performance, as demonstrated by these studies.