Do you want to better remember new names and faces? Get eight-hour sleep

In addition to answering whether or not the correct name was shown, participants were asked to rate their confidence on a scale of one to nine.

When given an opportunity to sleep for up to eight hours, participants correctly matched 12 percent more of the faces and names.

The findings suggest that sleep after new learning activities may help improve memory.

While the current study was conducted on healthy subjects in their 20s, the research team would like to explore the implications for people of all ages, including older adults.

“Sleep is important for learning new information. As people get older, they are more likely to develop sleep disruptions and sleep disorders, which may, in turn, cause memory issues,” Duffy noted.

By addressing issues with sleep, we may be able to affect people’s ability to learn things at all different ages, the authors concluded in a paper appeared in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.