To test the theory, scientists in Switzerland had subjects hold a vibrating object in their right hand. Other researchers gave volunteers math and verbal problems before going to bed and found that the parts of their brain that process math and language were more active during sleep. Then two reports came out this year showing that sleep seems to be essential for learning and for building the infant brain. Matt Wilson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology measured brain waves of rats learning a maze and found that during sleep those parts of the brain involved in learning displayed the same brain wave pattern that occurred when the animals were running through the maze. It was as if the rats were practicing in their sleep.
Newborn kittens develop sight during the first three or four weeks of life.
After closing one of the kittens' eyes, Stryker exposed the animals to a new visual learning experience for six hours. When the kittens then were allowed to sleep, nerves that transmit images from the eye to the brain grew connections to the visual cortex. If they did not sleep, very few connections were made from the uncovered eye to the brain. The closed eye did not show any nerve growth. Many neuroscientists believe the same process used to build connections between brain cells in a newborn essentially is reused for learning and memory later in life.