A new study reveals how the brain reprocesses and refines memories during sleep, particularly those related to spatial learning. Scientists can examine this role of sleep in the lab by training lab mice or rats about their environment using various memory tasks. In such experiments designed for spatial learning, the animals must learn and subsequently remember the location of food rewards in mazes. While scientists could so far only examine the reactivation of spatial memories in shorter sleep periods of two to four hours, the team now achieved such experiments during long overnight sleep. Using wireless recordings, they monitored neuronal activity in the hippocampus for up to 20 hours while the rats rested and slept after a spatial learning paradigm.
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