13.03.2019The influence of sleep on memory and mental well-being

Dr. Lorena Deuker, Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department for Neuropsychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

About one third of our adult life is spent in our sleep. During sleep, we are restricted or not at all receptive to external stimuli, so this condition poses a potential threat to attacks. Nevertheless, almost all higher-developed organisms sleep. This indicates that sleep brings an evolutionary advantage. What exactly this advantage includes has not yet been finally clarified. It is increasingly considered as an established fact that sleep is crucial for memory formation. It also plays a role in almost all psychiatric disorders as a cause or as an accompanying effect. In this lecture current insights of neuroscience regarding sleep and memory are presented and the connection with psychiatric disorders is discussed. The last section discusses how sleep quality can be improved in everyday life based on current research results.