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Sleep deprivation disrupts memory

Study in rats shows that a key brain signal linked to memory formation deteriorates after broken sleep.

These results, published today in Nature, suggest that there is a “critical window for memory processing”, says Loren Frank, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved with the study. In time, these findings could lead to targeted treatments to improve memory, says study co-author Kamran Diba, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. Researchers also noticed 4 that sharp-wave ripples tend to occur during deep sleep as well as during waking hours, and that those bursts during slumber seem to be particularly important for transforming short-term knowledge into long-term memories 5.

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