Neurologists have known for a long time that slow electrical waves during deep sleep they support the creation of memories and the storage of information in the brain. Why this is the case was not previously known. Now a team from Universitätsmedizin Berlin found and proved that during deep sleep, the connection between neurons in which information is stored and memory is formed is strengthened.
According to Berlin neurologists, slow waves make the cortex of the brain’s end particularly receptive to information. The finding could help optimize treatment approaches designed to support memory formation.
The slow, synchronous oscillation of electrical voltage in the cortex that occurs during the deep sleep phase, is very important for the formation of memory. It can be measured using an electroencephalogram (EEG). The waves are created when the electrical voltage in many neurons rises and falls simultaneously once per second.
“We’ve known for many years that these voltage fluctuations contribute to memory formation. When slow sleep is artificially extended from the outside, memory improves. However, until now we did not know exactly what happens inside the brain when this happens, because it is extremely difficult to study information flows in the human brain,” explains Professor Jörg Geiger, lead author of the study.
