Lost Your Keys? Sleep On it

It’s sad but true that as we get older our memory is not what it was, though personally I prefer the theory of my colleague Dame Dr Shirley Bond. At our hormone health seminars when asked if failing memory was a symptom of menopause she said it was more due to the fact that the older we get the more we have crammed in our memories and I agree with that. It’s like trying to pull a favourite sweater out of an overcrowded wardrobe, sometimes you can’t even see it – especially if your wardrobe is filled with black clothes like mine!

I was taught a trick by a French gypsy to help find things; you think of the object, blow into your left palm and then close your hand into a fist. Whatever first comes to your mind is where you will probably find the lost object, however unlikely it seems – no guarantees but it works for me more often than not.

Now science has got in on the act and offers a useful little tip if you are frequently losing your keys. What you have to do is record the sound of your keys jangling and then play it to yourself on an ipod, or mobile phone when you are sleeping. This discovery was reported by neuroscientists at Northwestern University, in the US who carried out a small study, with 12 volunteers.

They wanted to know if specific sounds played during sleep would boost the memory of learned information so they started by asking their volunteers to information learned while awake. (See the year in health 2009.)

Memorize the correct location of 50 images on a computer monitor. The images were shown one at a time, arranged in a random place on the screen — a cat appeared on the bottom left, a gong on the top right and so forth. Each object was shown with a related sound — so subjects heard a meow with the picture of a cat, and a crashing noise coupled with the image of a gong. After studying the 50 images and locations, the participants were asked to take a short nap.

While they were doing this their brain waves were mapped to see what kind of sleep they were having and when they were in the deepest sleep the researchers began playing (very softly) a series of 25 of the sounds that the individual had heard earlier in the memory game. When the participants woke up about an hour later, they said they hadn’t heard a thing, but on average, each person did slightly better at remembering the correct locations of the 25 objects whose related sounds had been cued during sleep than those of the other objects. The sounds appeared to have entered the sleeping brain and helped consolidate associated memories.

Over the last ten years neuroscientists have discovered the most convincing evidence that memory is indeed dependent on sleep and they believe it is because during deep sleep, the brain replays certain experiences from the day, which, in turn, strengthens the memory of what happened. It is thought that when it comes to factual memories, like names, faces, numbers or locations, memory consolidation happens only during deep sleep — a phase of non–rapid eye movement sleep. The other broad type of sleep, called rapid eye movement or REM sleep, which is when dreaming occurs, is believed to play a role in consolidating memories involving emotions and motor skills, such as dancing or playing an instrument.

So this might mean that subliminal CD’s for helping you lose weight or quit smoking might be on the right track, though no research has been done on this so far.

Also if you are studying for exams, despite what your mother told you, deep sleep can strengthen factual memories but only you sleep within 12 hours of learning. In other words, you are better off learning at night rather than getting up early to cram the following morning.

Whatever new skill you want to learn, it’s a very efficient idea to reinforce your learning while you sleep. The only thing that worries me is that those of us who live alone haven’t got anyone to switch the ipod on during the night – and your partner might not be too thrilled to have to stay awake and do it either! Wonder if I can train the cats?

Article by AnnA