Deep sleep is a learning experience

A good night’s sleep is the key to learning Keystone Archive

If you want to pass an exam, you should get a good night’s sleep beforehand, a Swiss researcher has found.

A study carried out by Reto Huber and published in the science journal, “Nature”, shows that the brain processes and consolidates newly learned matter during deep sleep.

He found that as soon as deep sleep sets in, the brain cells start to work in harmony, generating regular, low-frequency brainwaves.

Huber’s findings have shed new light on this type of brain activity, which has puzzled scientists until now.

He told swissinfo that while many previous studies had shown that sleep helps people perform certain tasks better, it was unclear why.

“Our study is probably one of the first to show that the slow brainwaves occurring during deep sleep are responsible for learning improvement,” said Huber.

“It provides for the first time a mechanism for how this learning occurs during sleep.”

Active brain

Huber and his co-researchers at the University of Wisconsin set 12 subjects a special learning task, and then measured their brain activity during sleep.

They monitored particular activity in an area already known from other scientific studies to be involved in the learning process.

“We found in a very small area [of the brain] increased intensity of these very slow brainwaves which dominate our sleep,” reported Huber

“Furthermore, we found that the larger the increase in the brainwaves during sleep, the more subjects improved on the learning task the next morning.”

Further tests

Huber told swissinfo that the study, conducted among young males, would be followed up by further tests on how activity – or lack of activity – influences sleep.

Studies are to be carried out to check the relationship between learning and deep sleep among other subject groups.

“What we are doing right now is looking at immobilisation to see if that has any influence on sleep. So it’s quite the opposite of our other study where subjects were actively doing something,” said Huber.

“[Our studies] might provide indications as to how we can treat or help people with learning or with sleep problems.”

Huber’s research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Wisconsin in the United States, where he is based.

swissinfo, Morven McLean

In brief

A study published in “Nature” shows that the brain processes and consolidates newly learnt matter during sleep.

In deep sleep, the brain cells work together to produce low-frequency brainwaves, which are responsible for learning.

The study found increased brainwave intensity in an area of the cortex the size of a thumb.