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in collaboration with
Liath Guetta (pulmonologist)
Medical validation:
October 27, 2022
Researchers have just discovered how the brain transforms new information into lasting memories.
We already knew that sleep helps consolidate learning. But what we did not know, however, was how this process materialized. Recent research from Princeton University has provided an answer.
The hippocampus teaches the neocortex what it has learned
It is using a network of artificial neurons – built using a false hippocampus and a false neocortex – that researchers at Princeton University have succeeded in mapping the cerebral process of memorization .
Their work revealed that during slow-wave sleep (non-REM sleep), the brain primarily revisited recent incidents and data, guided by the hippocampus, whereas during REM sleep, the brain was hyperactive – integrating new memories into the network of pre-existing memories, to consolidate them in the long term.
Clearly, it is when the brain alternates between a slow wave sleep cycle and a REM sleep phase that the hippocampus teaches the neocortex what it has learned; thus transforming “new and ephemeral information in lasting memory“.
“This is how one region of the brain can teach another region what it learned during sleep.”, confirms Schapiro, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Penn. “It is also a way of learning (…) as our environment changes.”
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Alternating sleep cycles is essential
If one of the cycles cannot be performed, scientists indeed find “that the information contained in the neocortex is overwritten. This is why it is necessary “to alternate periods of REM and non-REM sleep so that memorization of information occurs“.
Recommendations that do not surprise Dr. Liath Guetta, pulmonologist and sleep specialist.
“Each area of the brain has a given program (functioning of organs, processing of emotions, etc.). However, during REM sleep, the brain sorts what we have learned during the day and dispatches this information to each area of the brain. This process can be compared to tidying up a library. During this phase, the memorization/consolidation of information learned during the day takes place. Strange dreams can then appear but this process is normal: it is only information that crosses!confides the expert, before concluding “that it is important, as the researchers recommend, to have several cycles of sleepiI During the night” in order to be ” recharged ” and in great shape in the early morning.