Wakeful resting to embed memory

BBC Future article, "An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory"

Article about memory-formation claims that

The article draws on the research German psychologist Georg Elias Muller and his student Alfons Pilzecker in 1900 who found that memory for new information is especially fragile just after it has first been encoded, making it more susceptible to interference from new information.

In 2000s Sergio Della Sala at the University of Edinburgh and Nelson Cowan at the University of Missouri found that participants in research who rested (in a darkened room but avoided going to sleep) showed up to an 11-fold increase in the information they retained.

Michaela Dewer at Heriot-Watt University has replicated the research.

The exact mechanism is still unknown, though some clues come from a growing understanding of memory formation. It is now well accepted that once memories are initially encoded, they pass through a period of consolidation that cements them in long-term storage. This was once thought to happen primarily during sleep, with heightened communication between the hippocampus – where memories are first formed – and the cortex, a process that may build and strengthen the new neural connections that are necessary for later recall.

Research by Lila Davachi at New York University found that better memory retention occurs during "periods of wakeful rest"

Benefits seen with people who've suffered brain injuries of Alzheimer's - but also offers potential for students:

for many students, the 10-30 percent improvements recorded in these studies could mark the difference between a grade or two.

We remember things better before bed

BBC article claiming that learning things just before bed aids memory-consolidation