Brains replay memories while asleep and store the highlights
In a striking similarity to how computer back-ups work, researchers have made some interesting discoveries about how the brain organises memories.
It seems that the brain holds onto memories in short term memory areas for just a day, and at night, while sleeping, sifts through and moves the best ones, the highlights, to long term storage, and consolidates the remainder.
The study was run by Professor Susuma Tonegawa at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, an offshoot of the American university MIT.
Memories are first stored in the hippocampus before being replayed, almost like a video, and then being filed away in outer neocortex, the grey matter. It seems that most of this memory replaying and storage happens in the slow wave sleep, the deeper sleep, and thus this research has implications for people who do not sleep enough.
Given the apparent choice regarding which memories are stored and which not, this research has profound implications around some future manipulation of memory, where ways can be found to store 'good' memories and delate 'bad' ones.
Summarised for byronbodyandsoul.com by Mark O'Brien from original article Brains replay memories while asleep and store the highlights by Richard Alleyne
Comment
A classical instance of this is what new mothers know as 'baby brain' where they are unable to remember much for the time the new baby interrupts the sleep, thus depriving mum of the deeper sleep needed to file memories properly.
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