Researchers have discovered that getting a good night's sleep does in fact improve one's ability to learn and retain information, specifically in regards to language. Daniel Margoliash, Ph.D., Organismal Biology & Anatomy and Psychology, studies the neural mechanisms of learned behaviors, including how songbirds learn to sing and to memorize and recognize the songs of other birds. In the course of his research, Margoliash and his associates discovered that specific cells in the birds' higher auditory pathways become sensitive to component sounds of the songs the birds were operantly learning to recognize. The findings, which appeared in the August 7, 2003 issue of Nature, demonstrate that how auditory memories are laid down depend both on “bottom-up” influences such as the specific acoustics of the sounds, and “top-down” influences such as the behavioral task. In a previous study, published in the October 27, 2000 issue of Science, Margoliash observed that in specific neurons in zebra finches, the same patterns observed during daytime singing were recreated during sleep. This suggests that songbirds “dream of singing,” which might contribute to learning processes. These observations helped to spark the recent research Margoliash conducted with Howard Nusbaum, Ph.D., Psychology and researcher Kimberly Fenn.

"Beyond its intrinsic value, I think this is a good example of how animal and human research research can work cooperatively, and how the University of Chicago environment facilitates interdisciplinary research," said Margoliash.

While researchers have long believed that sleep has a direct impact on learning, this study is the first to prove scientifically that sleep promotes higher-level types of learning. The findings, which appeared in the October 9, 2003 issue of Nature, show that, [s]leep has at least two separate effects on learning. Sleep consolidates memories, protecting them against subsequent inference of decay. Sleep also appears to recover or restore memories."

The study tested the ability of three groups to understand words produced by a voice synthesizer by first measuring their ability to recognize the words and then training them to recognize the words. The first group was tested one hour after the training, and performance improved from 33% (i.e. one out of every three words correctly identified) to 54%. Since participants never heard the same word twice, they had to learn to "generalize" from the words to the rules humans use to recognize speech. The learning paradigm is similar to learning a foreign language, and is more complex than previous learning tasks examined for effects of sleep. The second group was tested 12 hours after initial morning training, only improving on their initial performance by 10 percent. The third group was taught in the evening and tested 12 hours later after a night's sleep. This group improved their performance by 19 percent. The second group was tested again after sleeping and also improved their scores.

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Daphne Preus, Ph.D. Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Cellular Biology and an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and her colleagues have discovered that GABA (gamma-amino butyric acid), a chemical that serves as a neurotransmitter in humans, plays a critical role in plant reproduction. The discovery, published in the July 11, 2003, issue of Cell, is a major step forward in our understanding of the plant fertilization process. When a pollen grain lands on a flower, it has to somehow grow a tube from the flower's stigma to the location of the eggs, making its way past several different cell types in the process. While the tube?fs creation is still not completely understood, Preuss's research shows definitively that GABA plays a critical role in guiding pollen to the eggs, as GABA is normally concentrated near the plant's ovule. In mutated plants where GABA was diffused throughout the tissues, the pollen tubes wound aimlessly, missing their intended target. "This is an example of something that nature found works well and then reused it over and over again," said Preuss.

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Researchers have discovered that getting a good night's sleep does in fact improve one's ability to learn and retain information, specifically in regards to language. Daniel Margoliash, Ph.D....

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