You know sleep is importantcan't-sleep
But
Did you know just HOW important it is?

Your long-term memory is consolidated when you sleep.

An international team of neuroscientists, including Mathilde Bonnefond and Til Ole Bergmann specialists in research on waves of brain activity (oscillations) of Radboud University, found that:

Short-term memory traces stored temporarily in the hippocampus (an area deep in the brain) are relocated to more outer parts of the brain (neocortex) during sleep. 

 ‘Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is responsible for the memory consolidation during our sleep’, Bonnefond explains. ‘NREM is known for its very slow oscillations (SOs). Other types of oscillations are hidden inside these SOs. We discovered that three types of oscillations are nested inside each other in the hippocampus and have a joint function.’

Slow waves, spindles and ripples 

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Slow oscillations only happen about once per second (~0.75 Hz). In a specific time frame within these SOs, Bergmann, Bonnefond and their colleagues found clusters of oscillations of an intermediate speed: the so called spindles which happen about 15 times per second (12 – 16 Hz). And within these spindles, they found clusters of superfast oscillations called ripples, which happen about 90 times per second (80 – 100 Hz), and which reflect the local reactivation of the memory trace to be shuttled to the cortex. To summarize: SOs contain spindles, which in their turn contain ripples. ‘Earlier studies only coupled these oscillation types in pairs’, Bonnefond explains. ‘But now, we see that SOs, spindles and ripples are functionally coupled in the hippocampus. And we hypothesize that they provide fine-tuned temporal frames for the transfer of memory traces to the neocortex.’

Slow oscillations only happen about once per second (~0.75 Hz). In a specific time frame within these SOs, Bergmann, Bonnefond and their colleagues found clusters of oscillations of an intermediate speed: the so called spindles which happen about 15 times per second (12 – 16 Hz). And within these spindles, they found clusters of superfast oscillations called ripples, which happen about 90 times per second (80 – 100 Hz), and which reflect the local reactivation of the memory trace to be shuttled to the cortex.

To summarize: SOs contain spindles, which in their turn contain ripples. ‘Earlier studies only coupled these oscillation types in pairs’, Bonnefond explains. ‘But now, we see that SOs, spindles and ripples are functionally coupled in the hippocampus. And we hypothesize that they provide fine-tuned temporal frames for the transfer of memory traces to the neocortex.’

https://www.ru.nl/english/news-agenda/vm/brain-cognition/2015/three-step-brainwave/

sleep oscillations

Slow Oscillations contain spindles, which in their turn contain ripples.

‘Earlier studies only coupled these oscillation types in pairs’, Bonnefond explains. ‘But now, we see that Slow Oscillations, spindles and ripples are functionally coupled in the hippocampus. And we hypothesize that they provide fine-tuned temporal frames for the transfer of memory traces to the neocortex.’

 

 

 

What’s the takeaway for us from this study?

Even more, we need our sleep!

Do all you can to support your memory with deep sleep.

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