The importance of sleep on memory and emotions
Writing by bwerner on Wednesday, 10 of September , 2008 at 9:28 am
Sleep choose what to remember and  what forget.
The emotions and images that have hit the soul and shook the feelings are preserved thanks to sleep.
During sleep the mind selects what remember and what not, and abandons the neutral memories to preserve those emotionally significant.
This is confirmed by a study conducted by researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and at Boston College and published in the Psychological Science journal.
The role of sleep in the process of preserving so-called procedural memory, or really the remembering how to do something (such as playing the piano) was already known.
Now the U.S. study has clarified the mechanism that regulates the episodic memory.
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This memory consists of emotionally elements loads and of elements only marginally related to the emotions (neutral memory) explain the researchers.
In the study were involved 88 students that were shown neutral images with neutral persons (one car parked in front of a shop) and emotionally powerful images (the same car after an accident destroyed parked along a road very similar to earlier).
The students were divided into three groups. Members of the first was asked what they reminded after only thirty minutes, to those of second group the same question was directed to them at the end of the day, after twelve hours, and to the third still after twelve hours but in which were included a night of sleep.
The results of the survey showed that the emotional component was mentioned in the same way in the first and third group, in both cases better than in the second group.
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While regarding the neutral component the only ones who remember were the members of the first group.
One can say that at night is the sleep in deciding what it is worth remembering and what we can forget.Â
(Sources: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
http://www.bidmc.harvard.edu/tools/newsnow/pr_out.asp?pr_id=1873)
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Category: Health, News, Psychology, Science
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