Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Sleep helps people learn complicated tasks

Sleep helps people learn complicated tasks, article.
"Sleep consolidated learning by restoring what was lost over the course of a day following training and by protecting what was learned against subsequent loss," said Howard Nusbaum, Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago, and a researcher in the study. "These findings suggest that sleep has an important role in learning generalized skills in stabilizing and protecting memory."
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4 comments:

Alex said...

You'd believe someone whose name is Nut Tree? (Nussbaum)

Joe said...

"night's sleep restored this memory loss,"

Thought I was smarter in the morning. Always gave credit to the two cups of coffee to get me going in the morning.
Joe

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Sleep has long been proven to be essential for memory and the fixing of learning.
Also vital for the immune system (when you've got the flu, all you want is to sleep it off, literally), and for the mood.

To quote my ace Neurology Professor, "sleep deprivation is highly similar in effect to nervous depression".
In the old days before efficient chemical antidepressants, nervous breakdown was treated with sleep therapy. And it tended to work.

(So, you see? Not everything in the past was as scary as electric shocks.)

Joe,
Don't throw away your coffee, anyway. You never know... ;-)
Especially since you seem to like coffee! So it's good for the mood too.

"In my days", coffee got accused of tons of bad things. And all were checked about rationally, one by one. The conclusion: coffee is a neurovegetative stimulant. It's bad if you have insomnia, because it'll worsen it. It's bad if you have cardiac arhythmia, abnormalities of the heart rhythm, because it can worsen it and impair the action of your medication. It's bad (I think) if you have significant hypertension, definitely not making it any better. And... that's about it!
Basically, it's no worse than tea. :-)
And DEFINITELY better than Coca-Cola!

Poor coffee. You've been SO unjustly suspected. Even of giving cholesterol!
I'm not much of a coffee guy myself, but still, it's delicious in quality chocolate. Nighty-night then.
Um, that is, right after a couple of chocs! Mmm, chocolate! (Tastes just like being in love. "The drink of the Aztec gods.")

Bruce McL said...

I can't remember where I read this, but it works for me. When I want to learn something new I sit down and skim through the subject first. Then sleep at night and the next day it's much easier to learn specifics. If I try to bore in to specifics right away it's much more difficult.