Students sometimes pull an all-nighter to prepare for an exam. However, research has shown that sleep deprivation is bad for your memory. Now, University of Groningen neuroscientist Robbert Havekes discovered that what you learn while being sleep deprived is not necessarily lost, it is just difficult to recall. Together with his team, he has found a way to make this ‘hidden knowledge’ accessible again days after studying whilst sleep-deprived using optogenetic approaches, and the human-approved asthma drug roflumilast. These findings were published on 27 December in the journal Current Biology.
Havekes, associate professor of Neuroscience of Memory and Sleep at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and his team have extensively studied how sleep deprivation affects memory processes. ‘We previously focused on finding ways to support memory processes during a sleep deprivation…
