Sleep helps you remember complicated tasks
Just when you needed another reason to saw logs, consider this: Sleep helps the mind learn complicated tasks and helps you recover information you may have otherwise forgotten over the course of a day, according to research conducted by the University of Chicago. Using a test that involved learning to play video games, researchers showed that people who had forgotten how to perform a complex task 12 hours after training recovered those abilities after a night’s sleep.
Participants were given a pre-test to determine their initial performance level on the video games and then they were trained to play the video games and rated on their performance. Participants who were trained in the morning showed an 8 percent increase in accuracy immediately after training. However, after 12 waking hours following training, the participants lost half of that improvement when the researchers tested them in the evening. But when the participants were tested the next morning, 24 hours after training, they showed a 10 percent increase in improvement over their pre-test performance. So, what might a good night’s sleep help you remember?