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Sep 9, 2007

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast." --William Shakespeare

The Science Of Sleep and Scent

Scientists studying how sleep affects memory have found that the whiff of a familiar scent can help a slumbering brain better remember things that it learned the evening before. The smell of roses -- delivered as people studied and, later, as they slept -- improved their performance on a memory test by about 13 percent. The results of this rigorous new study, whether or not they can help students cram for tests, clarify the picture of what the sleeping brain does with newly learned material and help illuminate what it takes for this process to succeed. Researchers have long known that sleep is crucial to laying down new memories, but it is only in recent years that scientists have begun to understand how this is possible. This New York Times article offers more.