Trevor Ponder Human Memory

A new study suggest that taking a 45-minute nap at daytime can boost your memory and help you remember what you studied. However, it will only take place if you learned it well.

Declarative memory is a type of human memory that stores facts, while procedural memory is for long-term skills or a memory for skills. According to the researchers, taking the daytime nap or sleeping can help set the declarative memories, which makes the facts you studied easier to remember.

Matthew A. Tucker is the lead researcher and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Sleep and Cognition. He said that, “sleep appears to have an impact on what is learned well, but not so much when on is not motivated to learn.”

A study was created requiring 33 people and a series of test: memorizing words, memorizing a maze, and memorizing a complex line drawing. The researchers had trained the 33 participants with certain declarative memory tasks. 16 of them took the 45-minute nap or non-REM nap and the 17 had to stay awake and watch a movie. On that same day, all the participants took the tests.

What Tucker’s team found wast that the three different declarative memory tasks, those that took a nap improved their performance compared to the one’s who stayed awake. But, a daytime nap would only work for people that learned their task well.

According to Tucker, “The nap group performed better overall than the awake group, but the difference wasn’t significant. However, when we looked at individual performance during training, we found those who did better during training benefited from napping.”

Tucker also said, “There is a likely basic level of learning that has to be attained before sleep can have an impact on performance.” And according to their study, the participants seem to perform well on one task, but not all of the three tasks.

He also said, “There is a lot of data starting to come in that there are benefits from naps on memory.” So, Tucker thinks that by taking a nap and if one has that motivation to learn what he studies, then napping may help improve the declarative memory.

According to Sara Mednick, “This paper is further evidence of how sleep, specifically naps, can be a tool for memory consolidation. Interestingly, the data shows that not all subjects utilize sleep for consolidation to a similar extent.”
Sara Mednick is an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego’s Laboratory of Sleep and Behavioral Nueroscience.
The paper was published on the journal Sleep’s February 1, 2008 issue.

Lifestyle for Better Memory memory, sleep

Noticed any difference in your kids’ grades if they sleep late? Teens that miss out on a full night’s sleep during the school week will most likely have degraded school performance due to low energy, poor memory, and will most likely gain weight. This is according to a study led by Professor Olds (University of South Australia) of more than 4000 children. You should be concerned because Adults are no different.

Experts agree that brain development is continuous but is only impeded or degraded by physical limitations, human evolution and sleep deprivation. According to them, your brain is like a muscle. Sleep plays a key role in its development. If Bodybuilders build lean muscle mass by working their bodies hard, followed by a period of restorative rest; the same is true for the brain. As muscles require periods of rest, so does your brain need some time off to process events and unwind. Neuroscientists now believe sleep is not only crucial to brain development, but is also necessary to help consolidate the effects of waking experience – by converting memory into more permanent and/or enhanced forms.

So what happens if we are sleep deprived?
Neurologists believe that as we grow older, our brain activity and memory retention slows down over time. By depriving sleep, we speed up this process. Adequate sleep is crucial to proper brain function – no less so than air, water, and food. Any amount of sleep deprivation will diminish mental performance, cautions Mark Mahowald, a professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “One complete night of sleep deprivation is as impairing in simulated driving tests as a legally intoxicating blood-alcohol level.”  Brain Tissue repairs and organ functions are slowed down when we don’t get enough sleep. When repairs are slowed, the cells itself may die. Since most of our memory processes are entirely dependent on these cells for storage, those who are sleep deprived will experience degraded memory.

Sleeping is also needed to restore body en energy and vigor.
If we don’t get enough rest, the brain doesn’t get enough energy to either store information or process it. In addition, sleeping problems are almost always involved in mental disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, as well as head injury. Although sleep deprivation does not directly cause those mentioned, experts agree that not getting enough sleep increases the likelihood. Previous work by Dr. Van Cauter, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, found that “metabolic and endocrine changes resulting from a significant sleep debt mimic many of the hallmarks of aging. We suspect that chronic sleep loss may not only hasten the onset but could also increase the severity of age-related ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and memory loss.”

So, if ever you’re thinking of till-dawn-night out, ditch it and sleep!
Worried about getting fired from your job? The best thing you can do to make sure you stay sharp and increase your chances of keeping your job is to make getting enough sleep a top priority.
Not feeling sleepy? Exercise about 5 to 6 hours before going to bed. Daily exercise often helps people sleep. Lastly, eat right at the right time. Avoid drinks that contain caffeine, which acts as a stimulant and keeps people awake while Alcohol robs people of deep sleep. Self – discipline is the key for proper and balanced diet.

Lifestyle for Better Memory sleep

This is a continuation of http://trevorponder.com/2009/07/introduction-meditation/

How Meditation Might Work

Practicing meditation has been shown to induce some changes in the body. By learning more about what goes on in the body during meditation, researchers hope to be able to identify diseases or conditions for which meditation might be useful.

Some types of meditation might work by affecting the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system. This system regulates many organs and muscles, controlling functions such as the heartbeat, sweating, breathing, and digestion. It has two major parts:

• The sympathetic nervous system helps mobilize the body for action. When a person is under stress, it produces the “fight-or-flight response”: the heart rate and breathing rate go up and blood vessels narrow (restricting the flow of blood).
• The parasympathetic nervous system causes the heart rate and breathing rate to slow down, the blood vessels to dilate (improving blood flow), and digestive juices to increase.

It is thought that some types of meditation might work by reducing activity in the sympathetic nervous system and increasing activity in the parasympathetic nervous system.

In one area of research, scientists are using sophisticated tools to determine whether meditation is associated with significant changes in brain function. A number of researchers believe that these changes account for many of meditation’s effects.

It is also possible that practicing meditation may work by improving the mind’s ability to pay attention. Since attention is involved in performing everyday tasks and regulating mood, meditation might lead to other benefits.

A 2007 NCCAM-funded review of the scientific literature found some evidence suggesting that meditation is associated with potentially beneficial health effects. However, the overall evidence was inconclusive. The reviewers concluded that future research needs to be more rigorous before firm conclusions can be drawn.

Side Effects and Risks

Meditation is considered to be safe for healthy people. There have been rare reports that meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in people who have certain psychiatric problems, but this question has not been fully researched. People with physical limitations may not be able to participate in certain meditative practices involving physical movement. Individuals with existing mental or physical health conditions should speak with their health care providers prior to starting a meditative practice and make their meditation instructor aware of their condition.

If You Are Thinking About Using Meditation Practices

• Do not use meditation as a replacement for conventional care or as a reason to postpone seeing a doctor about a medical problem.
• Ask about the training and experience of the meditation instructor you are considering.
• Look for published research studies on meditation for the health condition in which you are interested.
• Tell your health care providers about any complementary and alternative practices you use. Give them a full picture of what you do to manage your health.

Lifestyle for Better Memory meditation