Gentle Brain Stimulation Can Improve Memory During Sleep

While we're asleep at night, our brain is doing something incredible. The hippocampus and the neocortex, two of its key regions, talk back and forth, processing information for long-term storage--what's known as memory consolidation. Catching Z's, as it turns out, is critical for building our mental library. "During sleep, a magical process happens," says Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon at the University of California at Los Angeles. In a study recently published in Nature Neuroscience, Fried and his team have discovered that this process can be hacked.