That’s how we get our long-term memories!

_Elsa_

Tiffi continues reading the article. 

‘Researchers have measured brain activity during sleep and during dreaming. “And it does match the psychology in some interesting ways,” says Benjamin Baird, PhD, a researcher at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose work focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms of consciousness."

“What the brain is doing at all times is trying to construct a model of the world around us from the best input it has,” Baird says. When we’re awake the input comes from our environment (what we see, taste, smell, hear, and feel). But when we’re asleep, it may be trying to do the same thing - but the input comes from within.

“During sleep - and particularly during REM sleep when the brain is becoming activated again - the brain tries to do what it always does: it tries to construct a reasonable model of the world,” he says.’ (Info here)

Tiffi is fascinated with all this information. She comes across another article and begins to read it.

“Basically, when you encounter or experience something important, an area of the brain called the hippocampus becomes active and works to hold that event in your short-term memory. In order for these short-term memories to become long-term, and thus less easily forgotten, the brain needs to consolidate the information and store it outside of the hippocampus. This process involves the formation, breakdown, and reformation of synapses (connections between neurons) throughout the cortex. It turns out that one of the best things you can do to ensure that this process goes smoothly is sleep.

When you sleep, your brain “downscales” the unimportant activity of irrelevant synapses and “upscales,” or increases activity of, important synapses. A four-year-long study recently published physical proof of this phenomenon in the form of actual pictures of synapse activity in mice: “they found that a few hours of sleep led on average to an 18 percent decrease in the size of the synapses.” (Neuroscience News). Similar findings have been found in people too.’ (Info here)

“Wow! Research has found that short-term memories, our everyday experiences, get converted to long-term memory while we sleep,” Tiffi thinks. “I have to call Elsa and share this information with her. Maybe that could be a new story!”

Let’s continue to the next part of the story - Chewy has a great idea for Tiffi 

Start at the beginning – Tiffi’s Memoirs