Most Active Stories Fri February 8, 2013 Science of Slumber: How
Sleep Affects Your Memory Originally published on Fri February
8, 2013 3:55 pm JOE PALCA, HOST: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe
Palca, sitting in for Ira Flatow. If you add it up, we spend a
lot of time sleeping, about a third of our lives, actually, and
it turns out our bodies don't just power down as we slumber.
Research is showing that sleep plays an important role in how
our brains process and store the information that we learn
throughout the day. A study published in last week's edition of
the journal Nature Neuroscience looked at how sleep patterns
change as we age and how those changes affect our memories. The
researchers found that as we got older, as we get older, the
quality of our sleep deteriorates, and so does our ability to
remember newly learned information. So how much rest does your
brain really need, and what does it do with that rest once it's
getting it? We're talking about the science of sleep this hour.
We want to hear fro