Rest easy after learning a new skill. Experiments in mice suggest that a good night’s sleep helps us lay down memories by promoting the growth of new connections between brain cells. Neuroscientists believe that memory involves the modification of synapses, which connect brain cells, and numerous studies published over the past decade have shown that sleep enhances the consolidation of newly formed memories in people. But exactly how these observations were related was unclear.

To find out, Wenbiao Gan of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University Medical School and his colleagues trained 15 mice to run backwards or forwards on a rotating rod. They allowed some of them to fall asleep afterwards for 7 hours, while the rest were kept awake. The team monitored the activity and microscopic structure of the mice’s motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement, through a small transparent “window” in their skulls. This allowed them to watch in real time how the brain responded to learning the different tasks.

They found that learning a new task led to the formation of new dendritic spines – tiny structures that project from the end of nerve cells and help pass electric signals from one neuron to another – but only in the mice left to sleep. (1, 2)

We believe sleeping is dweling into the unconscious.
We believe sleeping is lost time from the “real” life we experience when awake.

But sleeping is what defines us.
Sleeping is what makes us who we are.

White is black.
Black is white.

Now wake up!
I meant… go to sleep!