Friday, 8 April 2016

Wakeful Resting Boosts Memory

Research suggests that slowing down our fastpaced lifestyles and taking time for reflection and relaxation may help our brains perform better

Researchers asked 16 adult volunteers to view pairs of images (e.g. an object and a face, or an object and a scene) without informing the study participants that they would be asked to remember the images later. Following the image-viewing, volunteers were instructed to rest for a time without falling asleep and think about whatever they liked.

After the rest period, the participants underwent testing to determine how well they remembered the image pairs. Brain scans revealed that while participants were viewing the images and then resting, they showed an increase in the activity between the hippocampus (a key memory region of the brain) and the neocortex, where the processing of images occur

There was a significant correlation between brain activity during image-viewing and resting, suggesting that brain activity in the resting phase was related to memory association.

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