New research by Northwestern University is the first to document the effect reactivating (激活) memory during sleep has on face-name learning.
The researchers found that people’s name recall improved significantly when memories of newly learned face-name connections were reactivated while they were sleeping. The key to this improvement was uninterrupted (不间断) deep sleep.
“It’s a new and exciting finding about sleep, because it tells us that the way information is reactivated during sleep to improve memory storage is connected with high-quality sleep. That is, targeted memory reactivation of face name learning depends on enough and uninterrupted slow-wave sleep, ” said the research leader Nathan Whitmore.
A study was conducted on 24 participants, aged 18 to 31, who were asked to memorize the faces and names of 40 pupils from a Latin American history class and another 40 from a Japanese history class. When each face was shown again, they were asked to produce the name that went with it. After the learning exercise, participants took a nap while the researchers carefully monitored brain activity using EEG measurements. When participants reached the “deep sleep ” state, some of the names were softly played on a speaker with music that was connected with one of the classes.
When participants woke up, they were retested on recognizing the faces and recalling the name that went with each face. In those with uninterrupted sleep, the reactivation led to a relative improvement averaging just over 1.5 more names recalled. “ We already know that some sleep disorders can affect memory, ” said Whitmore. “ Our research suggests a possible explanation for this — frequent (频繁的) sleep interruptions at night might be lowering memory. ”
“ This new line of research will let us address many interesting questions — like whether sleep interruption is always harmful or whether it could be used to weaken unwanted memories, ” said Whitmore. “ At any rate, we are increasingly finding good reasons to value high-quality sleep and learn more about the relevant brain functions. ”
【小题1】What did the new research focus on?| A．The balance between napping and health. |
| B．The ties between facial features and names. |
| C．The connections between sleep and memory. |
| D．The cause-effect between reactivation and learning. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Opposed. | C．Doubtful. | D．Supportive. |
| A．They were students from different majors. |
| B．They showed good ability to recognize faces. |
| C．They performed better after continuous sleep. |
| D．They improved identification by EEG checking. |
| A．Expectations for the future study. | B．Concerns about the present research. |
| C．Methods of screening out information. | D．Explanations of the activated memory level. |
