Sleep is absolutely vital for your health and longevity. Whether it is for productivity at work or for overall bodily well being, the importance of sleep cannot be emphasized enough. When you go to sleep, your body takes care of all the processes and bodily activities that need to take place to eliminate toxins. It is, therefore, vital that you sleep on time and avoid impacting your health negatively. Studies suggest that those who sleep eight hours a night are capable of not only good mental health, but also physical well-being.

Sound sleep is believed to have powerful impacts on one’s memory. According to a study that was done by the Brigham Women’s Hospital, people were found to be capable of remembering faces and names of people better if they got eight hours of sound sleep after seeing those faces and names for the first time. According to the study, it appears that when participants were given the opportunity to have a full night’s sleep, their ability to correctly identify the name associated with a face – and their confidence in their answers improved significantly.

The study conducted by BWH brought together a bunch of participants in order to test them in a controlled environment while staying at BWH’s centre for clinical investigation. They were shown twenty photos of faces, all with corresponding names, from a database of over 600 colour photos of adult faces and were asked to memorize them. After a 12-hour period, they were shown the photos again, with either a correct or incorrect name, and were asked to confirm the name of the person in the picture. While answering, the participants were also asked to rate their confidence while answering on a scale of one to nine. The study revealed that when they were given an opportunity to sleep for up to eight hours, the participants correctly matched 12% percent more of the faces and names.
Studies also reveal that sleep is important for learning new information. It appears that sleeping after new learning activities may help improve memory. It appears that sleep augments the body’s retention capacity. The study revealed that as people get older, they are more likely to develop sleep disruptions and sleep disorders, which may, in turn, cause memory issues. By addressing issues with sleep, it is likely to be able to affect people’s ability to learn things at all different ages, according to the study.

Source:
http://www.indiatimes.com/health/buzz/not-getting-8-hours-of-sleep-is-the-reason-you-can-t-remember-anything-247709.html