TedEd: The benefits of a good night's sleep

A TedEd by Shai Marcu

When you have a big test or performance coming up, and you've been working for weeks, but you're still a little bit unsure, do you sleep or do you pull an all-nighter? It turns out that sleep is much more important, especially for memory, than we often think. Sleep is actually a key part of your brain's functions, including memory. During sleep, our brain goes through a restructuring in which neurological pathways are strengthened and weakened to help us remember things. Herman Ebbinghaus found in the 19th century that we usually forget about 40% of the things we learn in the first 20 minutes. We can prevent this loss by transferring short-term memories to long-term memory. A structure called the hippocampus helps with this, and its function was determined in the 1950s by Brenda Milner with a patient known as H.M. The patient's hippocampus was removed, their ability to form both long and short-term memories was impaired. However, they were still able to learn physical tasks through repetition. The hippocampus takes short-term memories from neurons and strengthens and forms new synaptic pathways to preserve these memories. Memories made in times of strong emotion are usually easier to remember. Sleep is another important part of memory, especially the 2 deepest stages, known as slow-wave and REM sleep. EEG readings taken during these times show high activity between the brainstem, hippocampus, thalamus, and cortex. So the saying "sleep on it" might really be effective after all.