Correspondence
Dr. Uma Devi Pongiya*,
Assistant Professor (SG),
School of Biotechnology and Health Sciences,
Karunya University, Coimbatore-114,
Mobile: +91 9994583372
E - mail: umadevipongiya@rediffmail.com

Sleep has been identified as a state that optimizes the consolidation of newly acquired information in memory. Many evidences prove that both procedural and declarative memories are improved during sleep. Sleep does this through neurotransmitters and neurohormone secretion between its stages. While we sleep, our bodies secrete hormones that affect our mood, energy, memory and concentration. There occur two stages of sleep that include NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Hippocampus-dependent memories benefit primarily from slow-wave sleep (SWS), whereas memories not depending on the hippocampus, show greater gains over periods containing high amounts of Rapid Eye Movement sleep. During sleep, the brain rewires its circuits to make sure that all newly gained knowledge is stored for future use. The parts of the brain that we use to learn a task become active again during sleep. This activity, scientists suggest, could be the brain transferring memory from short-term to long-term storage.

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