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" What&amp;#039;s your average sleep time each night? If it&amp;#039;s less than six hours (which I am definitely guilty of, see info about my vampire-like tendencies here), you might be affecting your brain&amp;#039;s ability to learn and process new information. Research from the University of California, Berkeley found that blasts of brain waves called sleep spindles may help connect regions of the brain important for learning. These spindles are quick pulses of electricity generated during non-rapid eye movement sleep and can happen up to 1,000 times per night. These electrical impulses help move fact-based memories from the brain&amp;#039;s hippocampus to the prefrontal cortex&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;hard drive,&amp;quot; which then frees up the hippocampus to take in new data. So why does more than six hours of slumber matter? This spindle networking is most likely to occur during stage 2 of non-REM sleep, which occurs in the second half of the night. As the lead study author stated in this release, &amp;quot;If you sleep six hours or less, you are shortchanging yourself. You will have fewer spindles and you might not be able to learn as much.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m going to use this new study as a reminder to hit the sheets early tonight. What about you? Are you making any sleep habit changes? \u2013 Abby Cuffey, Associate Health Editor "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/a44592/snooze-for-smarts-440/>