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Sleep plays a powerful role in preserving our memories. But whilerecent research shows that wakefulness may cloud memories ofnegative or traumatic events, a new study has found thatwakefulness also degrades positive memories. Sleep, it seems,protects positive memories just as it does negative ones, and thathas important implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder . "The study of how sleep helps us remember and process emotionalinformation is still young," says Alexis Chambers of the Universityof Notre Dame. Past work has focused on the role of negativememories for sleep, in particular how insomnia is a healthy biological response for people to reduce negativememories and emotions associated with a traumatic event. Two new studies presented this week at a meeting of cognitiveneuroscientists in Chicago are exploring the flip side: how sleeptreats the positive. "Only if we investigate all the possibilitieswithin this field will we ever fully understand the processesunderlying our sleep, memory, and emotions," Chambers says. Protecting the positive To test how sleep affects positive memories, Rebecca Spencer of theUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her colleagues split 70young adults into two groups, one that got to sleep overnight andone that had to stay awake. Both groups viewed images of positiveitems, such as puppies and flowers, and neutral items, such asfurniture or dinner plates. The researchers then tested theparticipants' memories of and emotional reactions to the images 12hours later, after either the period of sleep or wake. They found that "sleep enhances our emotionally positive memorieswhile these memories decay over wake," Spencer says. "Positivememories may even be prioritized for processing during sleep." Butwhile people remembered the positive images more than the neutralones, their emotional response to the positive images did notchange over sleep versus wake. "It doesn't matter if you went tosleep or stayed awake - what you thought was a '9' - really great -you still think is a '9'," she says. The results, she says, could have significant implications fortreating post-traumatic stress disorder, as using wakefulness couldhave the unintended effect of degrading of positive memories inaddition to negative memories. "It suggests that insomnia should betreated at some point after a traumatic event - perhaps a fewdays/weeks depending on the level of trauma - so that thesepositive memories can be strengthened and eventually outweigh thenegative," Spencer says. The study also reinforces the idea that with the standard ups anddowns of our days, we should sleep to enhance our memories. "Formildly negative memories, we can learn something from them and weshould remember them,"she says. "Moreover, sleep enhances memoriesfor the positive events that we are exposed to and want toremember." From an evolutionary perspective, sleep's role in protecting bothpositive and negative memories helps us to analyze and predictfuture events, Spencer says. People need to remember both thepeople and events that gave them bad experiences, as well as thosethat helped them and gave them good experiences. Make Them Laugh In another study, Chambers of the University of Notre Dame andcolleagues, working under her adviser Jessica Payne, wanted to testif they could enhance positive memories over sleep by adding theelement of humor. Chambers' team took Farside cartoons and showedboth the originals and altered non-humorous versions to 66participants before and after a period of wake or sleep. Whileparticipants more easily recalled the humorous versions of thecartoons, sleep had no effect on the type of cartoon recalled. The fact that sleep did not impact such memories suggests somethingimportant about humor as a memory aid, Chambers says. "Sleep may bethought of as a way of aiding most memories since a period of sleepafter learning is typically better for subsequent memory than aperiod of wake," she says "Similarly, humor may serve as adifferent, but possibly equal, aid for subsequent memory. Bothmethods help us remember things better in the future, but itappears that they work in independent ways." Because there was an overall enhancement of memory for humorousover non-humorous cartoons, Chambers says, "it does appear thatthere is something about positive experiences that is worthremembering." Echoing Spencer's comments: "It could be thatpreserving such memories is adaptive to us, similar to thesuggested survival value of preserving memories of negativeexperiences, such as a deadly snake to be avoided in the future." Both studies - "Effects of Sleep on Memory and Reactivity forPositive Emotional Pictures," by Rebecca Spencer et al., and "LaughYourself to Sleep: The Role of Humor in the Investigation ofSleep's effects on Positive Memory" by Alexis Chambers et al. - arebeing presented in posters at the 19th annual meeting of theCognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS). More than 1400 scientists arein attendance at the meeting in Chicago, IL, from March 31 to April4, 2012. Additional References Citations. I am an expert from ipl-laser-machine.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Bipolar RF Machine , Diode Laser Hair Removal, Diode Laser Hair Removal,and more.
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