If you've had a good night's sleep, you are mentally more alert and your memory works more reliably. During sleep, a part of our forebrain called the prefrontal cortex remains active. It ensures that memories and learned information are transferred to our long-term memory. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich have now decoupled the production of growth factor IGF2 from the sleep-wake rhythm and found that it improved long-term memory in mice. This could also have been due to a disturbed sleep-wake rhythm. However, older mice exhibited abnormal behaviour. High levels of IGF2 and a permanently disrupted sleep rhythm evidently damage the brain over the long term. This finding is medically significant because IGF2 is a candidate substance for improving memory impairment in Alzheimer patients.
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