Sleep helps in remembering events, says research

A study published on Monday by the University of Exeter, London, has shown that sleep not only protects events from being forgotten, it also makes them easier to access.
The findings suggest that after sleep we are more likely to recall facts which we could not remember while still awake.
The research was carried out by a team of researchers from University of Exeter and the Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language.
They asked volunteers to remember novel and made-up words they had been told either before a night’s sleep or an equivalent period of wakefulness.
The researchers said the respondents were asked to recall words immediately after exposure and then again after the period of sleep or wakefulness.
They said the results showed that volunteers performed better at recalling the words after sleep than when they remained awake.
Nicolas Dumay, who participated in the research, said sleep almost doubles chances of remembering previously unrecalled material.
He said the post-sleep boost in memory accessibility may indicate that some memories were sharpened overnight.
“This supports the notion that while asleep we actively rehearse information flagged as important.
He said more research was needed into the functional significance of this rehearsal and whether, for instance, it allows memories to be accessible in a wider range of contexts, hence making them more useful.