Sleep makes our memories more accessible, study shows

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/uoe-smo072215.php

Public Release: 26-Jul-2015
University of Exeter

Sleeping not only protects memories from being forgotten, it also makes them easier to access, according to new research from the University of Exeter and the Basque Centre for Cognition, Brain and Language. The findings suggest that after sleep we are more likely to recall facts which we could not remember while still awake.

In two situations where subjects forgot information over the course of 12 hours of wakefulness, a night's sleep was shown to promote access to memory traces that had initially been too weak to be retrieved.

•••••