Waking Up at Night Could Be Your Brain Boosting Your Memory
-
We tend to think a good night's sleep should be uninterrupted, but surprising new research from the University of Copenhagen suggests just the opposite: Brief awakenings may be a sign you’ve slept well. The study, done on mice, found that the stress transmitter noradrenaline wakes up the brain many times a night. These "microarousals" were linked to memory consolidation, meaning they help you remember the previous day's events. In fact, the more "awake" you are during a microarousal, the better the memory boost, the research suggests.
-
@ayan Those noradrenaline levels rise and fall like waves every 30 seconds during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. At each "peak" the brain is briefly awake, and at each "valley" it is asleep. Typically, these awakenings are so brief that the sleeping subject does not notice. But the higher the rise, the longer the awakening — and the more likely the sleeper may notice.