Access

Brief Communication

Nature Neuroscience 12, 122–123 (1 February 2009) | doi:10.1038/nn.2253

Sleep benefits subsequent hippocampal functioning

Ysbrand D Van Der Werf , Ellemarije Altena , Menno M Schoonheim , Ernesto J Sanz-Arigita , Jos|[eacute]| C Vis , Wim De Rijke & Eus J W Van Someren

Sleep before learning benefits memory encoding through unknown mechanisms. We found that even a mild sleep disruption that suppressed slow-wave activity and induced shallow sleep, but did not reduce total sleep time, was sufficient to affect subsequent successful encoding-related hippocampal activation and memory performance in healthy human subjects.