Remembering Faces and Names Can Be Improved While You Sleep

If you’re great at remembering faces, but not names, you might want to try learning them in your sleep.

Right here in Chicagoland, Northwestern University researchers have found that your ability to recall a name improves, significantly, when memories of newly learned face-name associations were reactivated while you are napping.

The key to this improvement was uninterrupted deep sleep.

The study’s senior author, Ken Paller, adds, “This new line of research will let us address many interesting questions—like whether sleep disruption is always harmful or whether it could be used to weaken unwanted memories.  At any rate, we are increasingly finding good reasons to value high-quality sleep.”