How Your Pupils Organize Memories During Sleep

Highlights:

• Pupil contraction during non-REM sleep consolidates new memories
• Pupil dilation helps integrate older memories without interference
• Insights can improve memory research and artificial intelligence

Pupil size during sleep and memory consolidation research information have been proven to have some correlation. This research was done by the authors and published in the scientific journal Nature. The results offer the greatest level of detailed knowledge about how the human brain prevents catastrophic forgetting and concerns of this field can contribute to increasing human memory and to advance AI (1^✔).

With electrodes implanted in the brain and tiny cameras installed to monitor the mice's eye movements the researchers observed the animals during sleep. These were skills given to the mice for example, identifying various mazes to find incentives for themselves. The findings showed that consolidation of memory takes place in non-REM sleep and is dependent with the size of the pupils.

‘Did You Know?
Your pupils hold the secret to how your brain organizes and stores memories during sleep! #sleepstudy #medindia’

Role of Pupil Dynamics in Memory Consolidation and Sleep Complexity

• Pupil Contraction and New Memories: At this phase, there is constriction of the pupil during one of the subphases of non-REM sleep. This is the phase for recently formed memories to be revised and strengthened.
• Pupil Dilation and Older Memories: However, older memories are triggered back during another substage at the instance the iris expands.
• Intermediate Sleep Structure: The study proved that mice have multistage slow wave sleep than previously assumed as in human beings.

Applications of Memory Consolidation

The study reveals that there is a gap in the brain to prevent already stored information from distorting the new information from the new experience. This discovery could have applications for:

• Human Memory Research: The results of the noninvasive pupil tracking may be useful for patients with memory abnormalities because of mental illnesses.
• Artificial Intelligence: Understanding how memory consolidation occurs in the brain may be used to develop more efficient artificial neural networks that use less energy, and work better.

This study shows just how complex memory consolidation is during sleep, although these outcomes have not inversely impacted them. Thus, learning about how the brain can process new as well as old memories allows researchers to advance neuroscience as well as technology.

Reference:

1. Sleep microstructure organizes memory replay - (https:www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08340-w)

Source: Medindia

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