Washington, July 1 (IANS) A good night’s sleep will help you remember.
People who sleep after processing and storing a memory carry out their intentions much better than people who try to execute their plan before getting to sleep.
Washington University-St. Louis (WUSL) researchers Michael Scullin and his adviser Mark McDaniel have shown that sleep enhances the ability to remember to do something, a skill known as prospective memory.
Prospective memory includes such things as remembering to take a medication, buying a Mother’s Day card or bringing home ice cream for a birthday party.
While the vast majority of sleep literature in psychology is devoted to retrospective memory (things that have happened in the past), this study is the first foray into the relationship between sleep and prospective memory, the kind of memory put to work every day.
The findings, researchers say, offer important contributions to the understanding of the role sleep plays in cognition as well as memory.
These are the key findings from a study published of the relationship between memory and sleep. The findings were published online in Psychological Science.
