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August 15, 2008

Strange But True!

Q. Why do casinos stay open all night? Are there sound neuroscientific reasons for this?

A. You can bet on it. Evidence shows that sleep enhances memory, even just a brief nap of six minutes, says John Whitfield in Scientific American magazine. A sleeping brain is not just on standby but runs through a complex suite of activities, such as “moving” short-term memories from the hippocampus over to the cortex for more durable storage. Thus slumbering helps the brain juggle new information, extracting the gist of it and combining it with the day's emotions. This “executive thinking” is especially impaired by sleep loss as people become more mentally blinkered, less able to deal with novelty and to evaluate risk. Says sleep researcher Jim Horne of Loughborough University in England, “This of course is bad news for medics, shift workers, military commanders, and perhaps explains why casinos stay open at night.”


 
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