How Sleeping Boosts Your Memory

Do you remember the items you purchased on your last trip to the grocery store? Can you recall the number of a best friend without looking it up? Do you remember what you had for dinner last night? All of these things relate to one specific thing, our memory. Our memory serves a variety of different purposes from remembering a close friend's phone number to items we have purchased. It is vital to our everyday lives and even our livelihood. Unfortunately as we get older our memories decline for a variety of reasons. However, just like there are numerous reasons for our decline in memory as we age, there are also a variety of actions we can perform in order to strengthen our memory and thus prolong the eventual decline.

One of the best and easiest activities to perform in order to boost your memory is to get enough sleep. Sleep is vital to our bodies in numerous ways but when we sleep our memories have time to consolidate. Consolidation occurs after we have experienced something. This experience can be emotional or it can be a new job skill. Either way, the event struck us and made a "mark" within our brains. This "mark" sends a signal to the hippocampus that the memory needs to be logged into our long-term memory. When our bodies are at rest and our brains are not constantly processing information, then the hippocampus can more easily perform its job function. There is a debate as to which type of memory consolidation works best. Presently, while some evidence supports all types of memory, the majority of the evidence is showing that consolidation favors more procedural memories. Procedural memories are memories that are task oriented such as when we learn a new skill. So while we are sleeping, our memories are processing the procedures needed for the new skill, then when we wake up in the morning, we are slightly better at it than the day before.