How does our brain enable lifelong learning? This study gives us the answers

According to a report by PTI, while sleep is known to help with forming and storing memories during the day, a new study has found answers to how this continues to happen over one's lifetime without running out of neurons or brain cells.

Researchers found that at certain times during deep sleep, certain parts of the hippocampus — one of the brain regions involved in learning new things and forming memories — goes silent, allowing those neurons to 'reset'.

"This mechanism could allow the brain to reuse the same resources, the same neurons, for new learning the next day," said Azahara Oliva, an Assistant Professor of Neurobiology and Behaviour at Cornell University, United States (US), and corresponding author of the study published in the journal, Science.

Besides this, while we sleep, the brain cells go over everything we learn or experience during the day by repeating the patterns that were activated the first time, thereby, helping with how memories are stored.

The process is called 'memory consolidation', following which the memories are then stored in a large area in the brain called the cortex.

"We realised there are other hippocampal states that happen during sleep where everything is silenced. The (two) regions that had been very active were suddenly quiet. It's a reset of memory, and this state is generated by the (third) region," Oliva said.

The study's results help explain why all animals require sleep, not only to fix memories but also to reset the brain and keep it working during waking hours, the researchers said.

They believe that by tinkering with the processes at play during memory consolidation, they now have the tools to boost memory.