REM sleep essential for normal memory formation !

A team of scientists may at last have settled a long-standing debate about the role of rapid eye movement sleep in memory formation. Using mice, they reveal the activity of certain brain cells during this dreaming phase of sleep – but not at other times – is essential for normal memory consolidation.

For decades, scientists have known rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – the phase of the sleep cycle when dreams occur – is linked to spatial and emotional memory consolidation but have run into problems trying to prove it.

Now, a mouse study from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and the University of Bern in Switzerland – published in the journal Science – provides evidence that REM sleep does play this role.

Sylvain Williams, a professor of psychiatry at McGill and joint senior author of the study, explains that while they already knew the brain stores new information in different types of memory – spatial or emotional – before consolidating it, it was not clear, until this study, how it went about it.

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http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/310287.php