Taking a rest break—while
awake—can help strengthen memories, a new
study suggests.
“Your
brain is working for you when you’re resting, so rest is
important for memory and cognitive function,” Lila Davachi
observes. “This is something we don’t appreciate much,
especially when today’s information technologies keep us
working round-the-clock.” (Courtesy: NYU)
The findings, which appear in the latest issue of the
journalNeuron, expand our understanding of how
memories are boosted. Previous studies had shown this
process occurs during sleep, but not during times of awake
rest.
“Taking a coffee break after class can actually help you
retain that information you just learned,” explains Lila
Davachi, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of
Psychology and Center for Neural Science, in whose
laboratory the study was conducted. “Your brain wants you to
tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just
learned.”
The study, whose lead author was Arielle Tambini, a doctoral
candidate in NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Science,
focused on memory consolidation—the period when a memory is
stabilized after it is initially created, or encoded.
To determine if memory consolidation occurred during periods
of awake rest, the researchers imaged the hippocampus, a
brain structure known to play a significant role in memory,
and cortical regions during periods of awake rest. Previous
studies have demonstrated regions of the brain more active
during periods of rest, but their function at these times
had been unclear.
The experiment tested subjects’ associative memory by
showing them pairs of images containing a human face and an
object (e.g., a beach ball) or a human face and a scene
(e.g., a beach) followed by periods of awake rest. Subjects
were not informed their memory for these images would later
be tested, but, rather, were instructed to rest and simply
think about anything that they wanted, but to remain awake
during the resting periods.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
to gauge activity in the hippocampus and cortical regions
during the task and during the ensuing rest period.
Researchers found that during rest after the study
experience (after the visuals were shown), there was a
significant correlation between brain activity in the
subjects’ hippocampus and cortical regions that were active
during the initial encoding of each stimulus pair. However,
this boost in brain correlations was only seen following
experiences that were later memorable suggesting these parts
of the brain act in tandem for a purpose—to consolidate
memories during rest.
Also, when examining each subject individually, researchers
found that subjects who had greater resting correlations
between the hippocampus and cortex, also exhibited better
performance on a subsequent associative memory test and
those whose brain correlations were weaker, had worse
memory—in other words, the greater the activity in
hippocampus and cortical regions, the stronger the memory.
“Your brain is working for you when you’re resting, so rest
is important for memory and cognitive function,” Davachi
observes. “This is something we don’t appreciate much,
especially when today’s information technologies keep us
working round-the-clock.”
The research was supported by a grant from the National
Institute of Mental Health and Dart Neuroscience.
Pivotal Magazine
