Resting Brain Absorbs and Holds More Information

An advice to commit poems to memory before bedtime got rationale. Rest benefits brain memory function considerably as has been shared by a new research.

Photo: Resting Brain Absorbs and Holds More Information

A study was conducted that examined the brain before, during, and after a task. Exciting levels of activity in brain’s certain areas were observed. Brain showed better performance during the rest phase.

Lila Davachi, an assistant professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, and senior author of the paper published this week in the journal Neuron, scanned about 16 people in a functional MRI. Participants were made to look at images of faces, objects and scenes.

"Over a 20-minute period they performed an active task where we were showing them pictures of faces and objects and they were actively having to incorporate the two visual stimuli in each trial and make a response. After that we simply told them to lay awake and rest in the scanner for another eight minutes, and that was our critical scan,” Davachi said.

It was found that the hippocampus interacted more closely than it did before the task, which means brain remembered better during the rest phase.

Davachi added that as memories get older, they become stronger.

TopNews United States has contributed to the report.