Meryl Horne

After we have this conversation, we'll both have little sections of it kind of flying through our brains unconsciously for the rest of the day?

Right?

Like, we can see these things happening in the brain.

And we think these events, these replay events, are important for, like, consolidating memories into kind of long-term memories.

But to take this all back to that sexy place we started, sleep, this really matters because we know a lot of these replay events are happening then, during sleep.

Like, we can actually see these replay events happening in rat brains while they're sleeping.

Mm-hmm.

So, yeah, all this started kind of getting to me because I actually have not been sleeping great, so I talked to Lauren about that.

As I've been learning about this, it just makes me feel kind of crappy because I have a two-year-old who just like wakes up multiple times a night still.

And so I just kind of feel like, oh, is that just me?

My memory is completely screwed.

Like how bad is this?

We know that really helps, yes, for sure.

But that's not the only thing, because it is annoying when you get that advice and you can't actually control your sleep, right?

So I asked Lauren, like, what else we got?

And he said that actually there is other stuff we can do because sleep isn't the only time we see those replay events.

Like, we also think that our brains can strengthen memories when we're just kind of like hanging out, not doing much.

We know that if you try to learn something new and then you just relax for a bit, it can also help cement your memory.

So a big review of these studies found that wakeful rest after learning something new can improve memory.

Mm-hmm.