Want to Get Better at That Video Game? Get a Good Night’s Sleep!

Newswise — Why do we sleep? Scientists have pondered this question for some time, but no one yet has all the answers. Recent evidence suggests that one effect of sleep is to consolidate memories of events encountered during the day. Research carried out by a group of scientists in Belgium, led by Pierre Orban and Philippe Peigneux, suggests that memory related brain activity also is affected by sleep. In their experiment volunteers learned to navigate through a virtual town, and then had their brain activity measured with MRI scans while they attempted to reach a target location. After being tested, some of the participants were sent home to sleep and others were kept awake overnight in the laboratory. When scanned again several days later, everyone showed less brain activity in a region of the temporal lobe thought to mediate learning new spatial environments. However, those individuals allowed to sleep after the first training session showed more activity in another brain region, the caudate nucleus, which allows task performance to become more automatic during learning. These results, presented at the annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in Toronto, show that sleep alters brain function and in so doing may help turn new skills into habits.