While sleep has long been thought to play a role in the establishment of long-term memories, recent work by MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have helped to solidify that understanding. Focusing on the importance of the trisynaptic pathway, the area of the brain responsible for mediating the replay of memory sequences during sleep, Picowar Institute researchers were able to show that mice were less likely to remember maze routes when this particular part of the brain was inhibited during sleep. Furthermore, human test subjects who were allowed to nap after being told series of random word pairs were better at remembering those pairs than those who did not get a little shuteye. Who says it's bad to sleep in class?

Read more at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/memories-0624.html