Sleep plays important role in brain's ability to consolidate learning for competing tasks
21 Mar 2013
Sleep plays important role in brain's ability to consolidate learning for competing tasks
Sleep plays an important role in the brain's ability to consolidate learning when two new potentially competing tasks are learned in the same day, research at the University of Chicago demonstrates.
Other studies have shown that sleep consolidates learning for a new task. The new study, which measured starlings' ability to recognize new songs, shows that learning a second task can undermine the performance of a previously learned task. But this study is the first to show that a good night's sleep helps the brain retain both new memories.
Starlings provide an excellent model for studying memory because of fundamental biological similarities between avian and mammalian brains, scholars wrote in the paper, "Sleep Consolidation of Interfering Auditory Memories in Starlings," published in the current online edition of Psychological Science.
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Andrew says "This is interesting. Lots of our children have sleep problems and this is an important reason why those problems need to be taken seriously by medical professionals."