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Legendary
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 18,914
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Legendary
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 18,914
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from NPR: Of Neurons And Memories: Inside The 'Secret World Of Sleep'
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/15/212276...world-of-sleep
Quote:
On how sleep makes memory stronger
"When it comes to strengthening [memory], we know that the neural responses in your brain that are associated with things you've recently experienced are spontaneously replayed, or, we say, 'reactivated' while you're asleep.
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Quote:
On the "spring cleaning" sleep does to the brain
"And the problem is, if you keep storing all of this stuff, you reach capacity and you can't keep storing more. And so what happens during sleep, and specifically during the deep stage of sleep that we call slow-wave sleep, is that all of those synapses get downscaled again. So where they've been strengthened up, they all get proportionally downscaled."
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On treating depression by suppressing REM sleep
"In some people who are depressed, it's a good thing to suppress their REM [sleep] because REM is associated with specifically strengthening emotional memories, and in many cases negative memories.
So there's an idea that it might be that in people who have too much REM, as many depressed people do, these negative memories are getting over-strengthened, and that can actually be quite damaging and quite pathological."
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