Experienced success is fixed in a dream

Swiss sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gene­va believe that dur­ing sleep, the brain pri­or­i­tizes the stor­age of mem­o­ries or life expe­ri­ences asso­ci­at­ed with rewards.

The study involved 26 healthy adults. Before going to bed, they were asked to play 2 games. The first (“face game”) was designed to acti­vate the brain’s neur­al net­work, which is spe­cial­ized in pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion about faces. Par­tic­i­pants had to iden­ti­fy a spe­cif­ic per­son based on a series of clues. The sec­ond (“maze game”) acti­vat­ed areas of the brain involved in spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion. It was nec­es­sary to find a way out of the labyrinth with the help of direc­tion­al arrows.

It turned out that cer­tain pat­terns of brain activ­i­ty observed in the par­tic­i­pants when they were awake spon­ta­neous­ly occurred lat­er and dur­ing slow-wave (slow-wave) sleep. These pat­terns were asso­ci­at­ed with receiv­ing rewards for pos­i­tive behav­ior. At the same time, dur­ing sleep, activ­i­ty in the areas of the brain asso­ci­at­ed with tasks cor­re­lat­ed with mem­o­ry improve­ment.

Thus, sci­en­tists believe that they have dis­cov­ered a mech­a­nism that is designed to con­sol­i­date the pre­scribed life expe­ri­ence dur­ing sleep.