PSYC32H3 Lecture 11: Week 11_ Sleep
Document Summary
Learning enhances oscillations in the brain"s electrical activity as slow waves which occur during deeper stages of sleep. Strength of the oscillations determine memory based performances. Studies in invertebrates suggests that learning increases the strength of the connections of neurons (synaptic connectivity) In mice, the number of dendritic spines on neurons, which correlates with the number of synapses, increased during wakefulness and decreased after a period of sleep. Leading to the idea that sleep is a time for reducing the number of synaptic connections to enhance the information storage capacity of the brain. The rate of new spine formation was correlated with the degree of task improvement. These findings provided direct evidence that synaptic change in the mammalian cortex underlies learning. Sleep had no effect on the rate of spine elimination.
