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After sleep, there is increased insight. This is because sleep helps people to reanalyze their memories. The same patterns of brain activity that occur during learning have been found to occur again during sleep, only faster. One way that sleep strengthens memories is by weeding out the less successful connections between neurons in the brain.
Neurophysiological studies have indicated a relationship between increased P-wave density during post-training REM sleep and learning performance. [20] [21] Basically, the abundance of PGO waves translates into longer periods of REM sleep, which thereby allows the brain to have longer periods where neuronal connections are formed.
Young woman asleep over study materials. The relationship between sleep and memory has been studied since at least the early 19th century.Memory, the cognitive process of storing and retrieving past experiences, learning and recognition, [1] is a product of brain plasticity, the structural changes within synapses that create associations between stimuli.
Activity of the neocortex during slow wave sleep determines inputs to the hippocampus; thalamocortical sleep spindles and delta waves are the sleep patterns of the neocortex. [11] These inputs contribute to the selection of different neuronal assemblies for initiation of SWRs, and affect the timing of the SWRs. [3]
In older children and adults, it tends to appear during meditative, drowsy, hypnotic or sleeping states, but not during the deepest stages of sleep. Theta from the midfrontal cortex is specifically related to cognitive control and alterations in these theta signals are found in multiple psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. [15]
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More recent studies, however, have looked at the relationship between slow-wave sleep and memory consolidation, rather than REM sleep. One study found that low levels of acetylcholine found in the central nervous system, which are present during slow-wave sleep, aid in the consolidation of memories and therefore assist in the learning process.
One of the important questions in sleep research is clearly defining the sleep state. This problem arises because sleep was traditionally defined as a state of consciousness and not as a physiological state, [14] [15] thus there was no clear definition of what minimum set of events constitute sleep and distinguish it from other states of partial or no consciousness.