Source: Univeristy of Michigan.

Scientists have known that a lack of sleep can interfere with the ability to learn and make memories. Now, a group of University of Michigan researchers have found how sleep deprivation affects memory-making in the brain.

Previously, researchers knew that depriving mice of sleep after the mice performed a task resulted in the mice forgetting aspects of that task. But researchers weren’t sure what function of the hippocampus—two seahorse-shaped structures located in the temporal lobe of the brain where many long-term memories are made—was kept from doing its job.

Now, U-M researchers have found that interfering with sleep-associated oscillations—or the rhythmic firing of neurons—in one subsection of the hippocampus is likely the culprit. Their results are published in Nature Communications.

To test the role of oscillations in memory formation, the researchers, led…