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Feb 28, 2007

"What if you slept, and what if, in your sleep you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? What then?" --Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Science of Sleep and Learning

When practicing a musical piece, a gymnastics move, or any other activity that depends on effortless, virtually automatic execution, here's some memory-enhancing advice: If you snooze, you cruise. That, at least, is the implication of two studies in which people who practiced certain tasks performed them better on ensuing trials if they were first allowed to get some sleep. Moreover, one investigation at Harvard Medical School suggests that the initial night of sleep after learning procedural skills proves crucial for memory. The other findings indicate that sleep early in the night, which includes mainly slow-wave electrical activity in the brain, aids procedural recall.