The Key Benefits of Sleep for Memory

You need to sleep to clear some space in your memory

Our brain is not a rigid network. It is never set once and for all. It is capable of learning, of cerebral plasticity. When we’re awake, it receives enormous amounts of information and new connections are formed or reinforced between our neurons when we learn something. These synapses, which connect the neurons to their neighbors, are the physical supports of memory. The more intense or repeated the signal, the more significant they become, the more energy and space they take. But, as you may have noticed yourself, only a small part of the mass of signals we process during the day get stored in the long-term memory. The most important ones. Sleep, by cutting off the influx of informations, provides a time of respite for this sorting and storage.

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