The activity is suitable for intermediate students.
Say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 It seems that it is the kind of sleep that it's important, not the amount.
2 The slow-wave sleep occurs in the first few hours of the sleep cycle.
3 In that sleep memories are transferred from a long-term location to a long-term location.
4 Researchers asked people to memorise ordinary words paired with nonsense numbers.
5 In theory the ability to retain previously unkown information deteriores with age.
6 If you improve slow-wave sleep your memory will improve, no matter how old you are.
7 Exercise is always beneficial.
We have all been there. Not enough sleep. Your brain gets foggy, your memories, your ability to recall not as sharp. It turns out, it’s not necessarily the amount of sleep you're getting but instead the kind of sleep. But tonight ABC's Amy Robach on what it takes to get those short-term memories into your brain's long-term hard drive.
Scientists have discovered what's happening at night may be the key to why memories fade as you age. Turns out, it's not how much you sleep but what kind of sleep that may be crucial. It's called slow-wave sleep. The non-dream deep sleep that occurs in the first few hours of a sleep cycle. Your brain waves are actually different with higher peaks and valleys.
That sleep is actually transferring memories from one location within the brain, a short-term location to a long-term location.
We have all heard of testing memory by recalling dates and faces. But researchers asked people to memorize ordinary words paired with nonsense words, like ‘false’ and ‘dipotabia’, ‘jump’ and ‘villened’. The theory, that the ability to retain previously unknown information declines with age. Doctors then tested to see if people could remember those word pairings after sleep. The older patients with less slow wave sleep had a harder time remembering the words.
If you had bad sleep your memory was a lot worse. If we can improve sleep, we could actually improve memory.
The good news, no matter your age, doctors say there is a way to improve slow-wave sleep and thus your memory.
Exercise, and exercise may be specially interesting in relationship to this deep slow-wave sleep. Exercise can increase the amount of time you spend in that deep slow-wave sleep.
And Amy is with us now. Great to have you with us. This is really fascinating. So during slow-wave sleep, your memories are actually being moved from the front to the back.
Right. And the problem is, for people who have aged it's a natural process for there to be atrophy in that front part of the brain. So it doesn't do a very good job of taking those memories and putting them back in the hard drive where they're stored and able to be accessed.
So they never make it into the hard drive. You mentioned exercise in your report but there does the timing of the exercise or the kind of exercise matter?
Researchers say it’s very important not to exercise close to your bed time because then you’re going to be wired and charged, and you’re not going to be able to get any sleep, let alone…
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