IUBio

REM Sleep And Learning

maxwell mmmaxwell at hotmail.com
Mon May 21 04:30:23 EST 2001


Karl Self <karl.self at gmx.net> wrote in message news:9eal1j$1tdg5$2 at ID-34153.news.dfncis.de...
> "maxwell" <mmmaxwell at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hey-- there's evidence of improved learning, in respect to sleep stages,
> but not of the same type of tasks in respect to sleep stage, and there's
> a whole lot of literature both pro and con.
> By trying to get you to focus your question, the likelihood of some kind
> of good answer being given is increased.
> Since I can formulate the question that specifically, and still can't
> *definitively*
> answer it, (and yes, I have worked in a sleep lab, and know the literature)
> your reply is cute, but false.
> Someone else can help you.
> -maxwell
> 
>     I think the problem here is that I am far too inknowledgeable to
> formulate my question properly,

Not actually-- it's just that you'd like a simple answer for what is in fact a complex
question. I mean, yes, students who have a full night's sleep after study do better on exams, than those who don't-- even if we control for sleepiness/sleep obtained between respective groups. 
If we perturb REM sleep, they do worse than if we perturb slow-wave sleep, but that neither proves REM is necessary for memory consolidation, nor predicts with great confidence how well they'll retain the test knowledge over time. Note that just the act of recalling material during testing is *itself* a form of reinforcement. 

 and that you are too knowledgeable to give
> me the ballpark answer which I am after.

On the contrary. Your reply to my posting that 'if you could formulate the question, you could answer it' was in one way true-- if you'd said you could then *try* to answer it-- which is why I deemed it 'cute.' As a tautological statement, it was false, however.
*Properly* explaining this gets into a whole off-topic history-of-science essay, alas.
    I apologize if I was snappy with you

>     Thanks for writing though, I appreciate it.

Thanks for giving some more thought to the matter. You might want to read Hobson's book  (Scientific American Press) as a good generally accessible intro-- just don't get too caught up
in *his* grand hypotheses, no more than in the simplification you were initially trying for.
Hmm. I did mention procedural versus episodic/explicit in the first post. Some think that there's consolidation more of procedural/implicit in slow wave, but the parceling-out of memory types, procedural<|>explicit versus slow wave<|>REM sleep is itself likely over-simplifying.

>     Neither I personally or anything I have ever done has ever been called
> cute, so that was a new experience for me.

;~)

-maxwell

> 




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