Feeling forgetful? Maybe you just need a good night’s sleep.
New research, reported in the journal Public Library of Science One, has found sleep disturbances can cause memory loss and affect the way the brain processes experiences to create new memories.
A team of sleep scientists, led by Ina Djonlagic at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, found that patients with sleep apnea had a harder time learning a new task than a group of people were able to sleep through the night.
The researchers compared the experiences of both groups of study participants who were taught a new task. Both groups were able to perform the newly learned task initially, during the training phase. But sleep apnea patients did not do as well on the task the day after training, suggesting that the overnight sleep disturbance was likely related to the subsequent poorer performance.
"Optimal overnight memory consolidation in humans requires a certain amount of sleep continuity independent of the total amount of sleep," said the authors.