Scientists have found new support for the age-old advice to “sleep on it.”
Their work suggests that the best way to make sense of new information may be to get some quality shut-eye.
Mice allowed to sleep after being trained to perform a specific task remembered what they had learned far better than those deprived of sleep for several hours afterwards.
The researchers, from the University of Pennsylvania, also found that the five hours following learning are the crucial period when new information is lodged in the brain’s memory bank.
