Health & Wellness News From Byron J. Richards

Quality Sleep Boosts Memory and Learning

Friday, November 21, 2008 - Byron Richards, CCN

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I was fascinated by a new study from researchers at the University of Chicago showing that complex tasks learned during the day, and often forgotten, were remembered in the morning after sleep helped to consolidate and preserve the new learning.

The experiment involved teaching video game playing skills to mostly women who don’t play such games. The research showed that “When trained in the morning subjects showed an 8 percentage point improvement in accuracy immediately after training. However after 12 waking hours following training, subjects lost half of that improvement when tested in the evening. When subjects were tested the next morning 24 hours after training, they showed a 10 percentage point improvement over their pre-test performance.”

The researchers said their testing indicated that sleep is helpful for consolidation of learning and may help with language processes such as reading and writing as well as eye-hand skills such as tennis.

From my own personal experience I also think sleep helps integrate newly learned complex technical information into one’s existing knowledge base. I also think that one of my favorite dietary supplements, phosphatidylserine (PS) helps improve this process.

For years I have given PS to children, teens, and adults who wanted to remember what they were studying better. It is really quite amazing when someone has to cram a lot of information into their head in a short period of time. I have always had people take it before study. And many people seeking to generally improve learning take it on a regular basis.

Three or four months ago I decided to start taking one capsule of PS at bed to see if it helps sleep in any way. My reason for trying this was an anti-aging strategy for my brain. As we age, receptors in our brains decline and our subconscious brains do not process hormone signals and a lot of other signals anywhere near as well as when we are younger. I knew from the stress-related research on PS that it was capable of restoring brain receptors for hormones, so I thought by taking it at bed it might have some type of general reparative function that would be anti-aging on brain structure.

In my work I am constantly reading new science, integrating it into what I already know, as well as writing about it. Often what I read and translate is extremely complex biochemistry where the implications are not all that obvious upon first reading. I often begin writing about something during the day and take another crack at it in the morning. I have noticed since I started taking PS at bed that I wake up with the information much more integrated, often seeing relationships to other things I know that I did not see the day before when I was first learning the information. I never really thought of it until I saw this new study, but I always consider morning my best writing time. It sure makes sense to me that a good night’s sleep is a great learning time! This also indicates that those who do not sleep well will have much more trouble learning and retaining information.

Related Entries: Teen Sleep Problems Lead to Depression & Drug Abuse
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Quality Sleep is Needed for Memory and Learning

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