Games Show How Sleep Affects Long-term Memory

Studies of the brain using the video game Duke Nukem (3D Realms, 1996) have
shown how sleep effects long-term memory.

The team conducting the experiment "used MRI scans to see how the volunteers
stored spatial information from the game" and found that sleep deprived gamers
re-called information from a different part of the brain to those who slept.

The team set the volunteers the challenge of finding their way to a location in
an in game city whilst mapping their brains with MRI. After being given time to
familiarise themselves with the terrain they were split into two groups: those
who were allowed to get a good nights sleep and those who weren't.

"Scans showed that the 'hippocampus', an area of the brain known to be involved
in memory and direction, was most active when the gamers had to retrieve
memories to reach their destination."

On the second and third nights, both groups were allowed to get a good nights
sleep. The team then asked the volunteers to do the same test again.

"The researchers found that the group who had slept recalled information from an
area of the brain known as the 'striatum'."

"Storing the memories in the 'striatum' allowed them to make automatic decisions
about the direction they had to travel. The sleep-deprived gamers, who still
relied on the 'hippocampus', had to think harder about their virtual
navigation."

The researchers wrote that "the work shows that sleep trains the brain and
promotes memory reorganisation from the hippocampus to the striatum, meaning
that navigation becomes more automatic."

"It looks like sleep accelerates this normal process. It looks like the memories
are reprocessed during sleep." said Mr Oban.

The team said its work also shed light on how we navigate the real world.

"If you move to a new town, you have to think about where you are going," said
Pierre Orban of Liege University in Belgium, one of the authors on the paper.

"But with time, once you know the city, you don't have to think about your route anymore."

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Stories like this show how games are helping researchers understand the brain and how it works. Its a step in the right direction as it presents games in a different light and shows that they're not just a hobby of adolescent males.