Waking Up at Night Could Be Your Brain Boosting Your Memory

[Northerner]

We tend to think a good night's sleep should be uninterrupted, but surprising new research from the University of Copenhagen suggests just the opposite: Brief awakenings may be a sign you’ve slept well.

The study, done on mice, found that the stress transmitter noradrenaline wakes up the brain many times a night. These "microarousals" were linked to memory consolidation, meaning they help you remember the previous day's events. In fact, the more "awake" you are during a microarousal, the better the memory boost, the research suggests.

"Every time I wake up in the middle of the night now, I think — ah, nice, I probably just had great memory-boosting sleep," says study author Celia Kjaerby, PhD, an assistant professor at the university's Center for Translational Neuromedicine.

Waking Up at Night Could Be Your Brain Boosting Your Memory

University of Copenhagen researchers have linked brief nighttime awakenings to better memory in mice, adding to our understanding of what happens in the brain during sleep.

www.medscape.com

No, it's my bladder telling my brain that I need to get up and pee... 😱

 

[Bloden]

Snap! @Northerner. I wake up at pee o'clock, not cos my enormous brain has recharged zzzzzzzz.

 

[mikeyB]

Mice don't live very long - even in ideal conditions they peg out after 2 years, in the wild it's more like 6 months. They are also nocturnal, in an effort to avoid predators. They sleep in nests for around 12 hours. How that lifestyle can be compared to humans is beyond me, They also pee all the time, to mark out territory and routes to food.

The additional comparison with us that short lived animals perceive time in a completely different way.

So looking at their brains is a futile activity. They don't need to consolidate memories, they use the smell of mouse pee to find their way to food they found the day before. And the reason why the noradrenaline keeps going up during sleep, is they are nocturnal and supposed to be looking for food and watching out for predators, and checking that it's dark.