For old people, the morning of the evening is not more complicated
With age, sleep ceases to help memoryKirill Stasevich, Compulenta
Sleep is necessary for a person to consolidate memory, but with age it ceases to help remember important things. According to scientists, it is age-related sleep disorders that can be one of the main causes of memory loss in the elderly.
Everyone has heard how older people complain of forgetfulness and insomnia. However, there are disappointingly few clear estimates of how the relationship between memory and sleep changes with age. Scientists from the University of Massachusetts (USA) studied the effect of sleep on learning and non-motor memory in two groups: 25 young people and 24 volunteers aged 51 to 70 years. During the experiment, each of them had to play a computer game: sequentially choose the right door from ten to move from one virtual room to another. Each of the ten multi-colored rooms had three multi-colored doors, so the participants of the experiment were supposed to remember ten combinations of colors. The number of rooms to pass through increased gradually, from 2 to 10. The training was considered completed if a person opened the correct doors in all ten rooms four times in a row without error.
Then the volunteers were released for 12 hours – and it was either daytime wakefulness or night sleep. After that, everyone was again offered a test with doors and rooms. In a group of young people, the beneficial effect of sleep on memory was clearly revealed: after sleep, the subjects made mistakes much less often than after half a day of wakefulness. On the contrary, in the elderly, sleep had almost no effect on memory consolidation: they were equally mistaken both after sleep and after waking up. The scientists reported the results of their experiments at the annual congress of the Neuroscience Society in Washington.
It is known that our sleep is far from a homogeneous process, and each of its stages plays a role in maintaining normal mental activity. For example, it is believed that during the slow sleep phase, the brain replays fresh sensations received during the day. Then, during rem sleep, active work begins: associative connections are established between new impressions and old experiences, solutions are planned, new ideas appear; the "unconscious" solution of "daytime" problems and questions occurs during rem sleep. In addition, during this phase, some important information is overwritten from short-term memory into long-term memory and becomes part of the overall experience.
Encephalogram in the REM phase (rapid eye movements, "rem sleep" with dreams)
resembles an EEG while awake – VM
It is known that one of the subsections of rem sleep is responsible for motor memory, and it is this subphase that greatly increases in time in the elderly. But memory, as is known, does not get better in the elderly, and scientists believe that the reason for this is sleep disorders: the second subphase of rem sleep is interrupted either by awakenings or by intrusions of waves of another, first phase. And although this period is responsible for motor memory, the authors believe that the integrity, continuity of this phase is also very important for the overall consolidation of memory, regardless of the type of information being processed.
Prepared based on the materials of the University of Massachusetts:
UMass Amherst Research Suggests Sleep Does Not Benefit Learning in Older Adults as it Does for Young People.
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15.11.2011