The unexpected way to make memories stick—without any extra effort.
Just 10 minutes sitting quietly after learning something new is enough to boost people’s memory, research finds.
Quiet resting does not just help us remember, it also increases how much detail we subsequently recall.
Dr Michael Craig, who led the study, said:
“Recent research suggests that the memory system strengthens weak new memories by ‘reactivating’ them, where brain activity first observed during learning automatically reappears in the minutes that follow.
This appears especially true during sleep and quiet resting, when we’re not busy taking in any new sensory information.
We think that quiet resting is beneficial because it is conducive to the strengthening of new memories in the brain, possibly by supporting their automatic reactivation.
However, we don’t know exactly how this rest-related memory strengthening works.
Specifically, it remained unknown whether quiet resting only allows us to retain more information, or whether it also helps us to retain more detailed memories.”
People were shown a series of photos in the study — some were exactly the same as those they had seen before, and some were similar.
Those who rested after learning for just 10 minutes were better at spotting the subtly different photos.
Dr Craig explained:
“In this memory test, peoples’ ability to discriminate between ‘old’ and ‘similar’ photos provides a measure of how detailed stored memories are.
If detailed memories are stored, people should notice subtle differences in similar photos, and correctly respond ‘similar’.
However, if not-so detailed memories are stored, people should miss the subtle differences in similar photos, and mistake them for ‘old’ photos.
Interestingly, we found that younger adults who quietly rested in the minutes that followed the photo presentation were better at noticing subtle differences in similar photos, suggesting that these individuals stored more detailed memories, compared to those who did not rest.
This new finding provide the first evidence that a brief period of quiet rest can help us to retain more detailed memories.”
The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Craig et al., 2018).
