
Study Shows Why Sleep is Needed to Form Memories - toni
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2009/02/sleep-memory-formation.html
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davi
Interesting work. Headline is an overstatement.

From the paper's abstract:

"Consolidation is inhibited by reversible, intracortical antagonism of NMDA
receptors (NMDARs) or cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) during post-MD
sleep."[1]

So they found a clue: they banged the system with a well-chosen hammer and saw
a perturbation. Many other hammers could perturb the system similarly; how the
system _works_ has yet to be determined.

[1] "MD" = monocular deprivation,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_dominance_column>

