Your memories are strengthened during periods of rest while you are awake, researchers have found. The findings expand the understanding of how memories are boosted; previous studies had shown this process occurs during sleep, but not during times of rest while awake.
This means that taking break after a period of study can actually help you retain the information that you just learned.
The study focused on memory consolidation -- the period when a memory is stabilized after it is initially created, or encoded. To determine if memory consolidation occurred during periods of awake rest, the researchers imaged the hippocampus, a brain structure known to play a significant role in memory, and cortical regions during periods of waking rest.