How the brain memorizes new visual information in sleep

In the United States, at the conference "Neuroscience and the well-being of society" was presented a new study by American scientists showing that sigma rhythms help the human brain to internalize in sleep visual information received during the day.

Earlier Takeo Watanabe (Takeo Watanabe) from Brown University and his colleagues published a study that showed how the brain internalizes information about new motor skills. It turns out that delta and sigma rhythms are responsible for this. Although it was thought that these waves rarely occur together during sleep.

In the new study, scientists set out to understand how the brain memorizes visual information. As part of this study, while 15 experimental participants slept, scientists measured their brainwaves. The subjects were then asked to find "outliers" among a sequence of lines in a drawing. At the same time, scientists measured brain oscillations not only when the participants slept (before and after the task), but also when they performed the visual task offered to them.

As a result, it turned out that after sleep the amplitude of sigma oscillations increased. However, delta oscillations, recorded earlier, were not found this time. According to their opinion, sigma-rhythms are responsible for the work of brain regions, and delta-oscillations - for communication between them.

Further research by scientists will help to understand even more what kind of connections between brain regions are necessary for memorizing information, and what is the process of its assimilation.