C

FRIDAY, Dec£®5, 2008—College students who think all-night study sessions will help them remember facts might want to get some sleep instead£®That's the message from a new study that finds that as you slee p, the mind consolidates the things you learn during the day£®

Study participants who learned how to play a video game in the morning or evening did a better job the next day after a night's rest, apparently because their brains were actively absorbing what they'd learned as they slept£®

The finding shows "that sleep is not just a passive state when no information is coming in," said Howard Nusbaum, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago£®

For the study, the researchers recruited 200 college students£®Most of them weren't very famili ar with playing video games£®Some of the participants learned how to play the games in the morning, while others learned in the evening£®The researchers then tested the subjects on the video games 12 hours later and 24 hours later£®

Those who took pa rt in the morning training sessions showed an aver age eight-percentage-point improvement in their performance immediately after training£®They performed more poorly—scoring four percentage points better—12 hours later£®But they scored 10 percentage points better the next morning£®

"If we train you in the morning and come back at the end of the day, you forget some of what you learned," Nusbaum said£®"But if you sleep after that, it restores some of what you learned£®"

The students who took part in the evening training sessions performed better the next morning after sleeping, than they did after being trained£®