Dr. Matt Walker

You should pull this in here.

And it would enhance this paragraph that you're working on, or it would improve this experimental idea that you're coming up with.

It doesn't do that, but your brain does that.

How does it do that?

In part, it's because sleep is building these associative networks.

So it's not simply the student who learns the rote facts.

It's the student who learns the facts and then understands what they mean.

sleep is not just about learning and it's not just about knowledge.

It's about wisdom, which is knowing what it all means when you fit it together.

And that's one of the other roles of sleep.

So those are some of the beneficial things that sort of the carrots that can come by way of for your learning and memory.

There are so many other carrots though.

We described for your immune system how there is this restoration that happens during deep sleep, and it primes that.

But there are other benefits too.

One of the things that we've discovered, and we hopefully will get to discuss this in more detail, is that sleep provides

almost a rebooting of your emotional and your mood states.

And as a consequence, you wake up the next day and you are dressed with a very different set of emotional clothing.

and sleep when you're getting it, almost it's like a set of emotional windscreen wipers, that it's just cleared those things off and you wake up.

It's the reason that people will tell you, you know,

if something is troubling you, don't worry, just come back tomorrow, just give it a night of sleep and you'll probably feel better tomorrow.