New Study Shows That Sleep Can Improve Next Day Performance

Westchester, Ill. (June 1, 2004) - Sleep after training your brain improves the subject's performance at the task, according to an abstract that will be presented at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. The results of this study suggest that the deeper a part of your brain sleeps, the more performance improves the next day.

Guilio Tononi, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted the study with professional colleagues at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York,NY,USA .

This study asks the question, whether a piece of your brain can be made to sleep more deeply than the rest. Inducing local sleep is possible, and one can do so by learning a task from that part of the brain while awake. The authors used a form of unconscious motor learning that depends on two brain areas in the right parietal lobe.

Behavioral analysis shows that subjects training in the evening had improved task performance when retested after sleep, while subjects training in the morning did not improve when retested after 8 hours of wakefulness. Post-sleep performance was strongly correlated with the local increase in slow-wave activity.

Using an electroencephalograph with 256 channels, results show that when subjects go to sleep after training, precisely those two areas show an increase in slow waves; the classic marker of sleep intensity. Learning is developed through a process called plasticity, which changes the way neurons react. The more plasticity in the brain, the bigger waves produced.

Essentially, the more localized sleep you receive, the more you will learn. Moving into a deep sleep, your brain will become better at the task that has been subjected to your memory. The need for sleep may be triggered by plastic changes in your brain, and the local sleep response is good for you.

The APSS Annual Meeting is the preeminent gathering of sleep researchers and clinical practitioners. This year, the APSS Annual meeting will feature almost 1,000 abstracts and attract more than 5,000 attendees. This meeting serves as a unique opportunity to report the significant role sleep plays in general wellness in this rapidly emerging field.