Good shut-eye is critical for all sorts of reasons — but now there's a compelling new one, according to a study.
An international team of scientists discovered an interesting incentive for getting eight hours of sleep a night.
Make sure to get plenty of slumber if you're trying to learn a new language, researchers say.
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The study, led by the University of South Australia, revealed that the coordination of two electrical events in the sleeping brain "significantly" improves its ability to remember new words and complex grammatical rules, as news agency SWNS reported.
To explore the relationship between memory retention and sleep, researchers at the university asked 35 English-speaking adults to study Mini Pinyin, a miniature language based on Mandarin.
Mini Pinyin's grammatical rules are similar to English.
The language contains 32 verbs and 25 nouns, SWNS reported, including 10 human entities, 10 animals and five objects.
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Overall, the language has 576 unique sentences.
The participants were split into two groups.
Half of them learned the language in the morning and returned in the evening to have their memory tested.
The other half learned Mini Pinyin in the evening, slept through the night and had their memory tested the next morning.
Researchers also tracked the brain activity of the second group during their sleep, said SWNS.
Those who slept performed significantly better than those who remained awake, according to the findings, which were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Lead researcher Zachariah Cross, PhD, said sleep-based improvements were linked to the coupling of slow oscillations and sleep spindles — brainwave patterns that synchronize during NREM sleep.
Cross, who earned his PhD at the University of South Australia and is now based at Northwestern University in the U.S., said that "the coupling likely reflects the transfer of learned information from the hippocampus to the cortex, enhancing long-term memory storage."
Post-sleep neural activity, he also said, "showed unique patterns … suggesting a strong link between sleep-induced brainwave coordination and learning patterns."
The study underscores the importance of sleep in learning complex linguistic rules, said researcher Scott Cousens of the University of South Australia.
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Sleep does not just mean a time to rest, he suggested.
"It is also an active, transformative state of the brain," he said.
The research team said it plans to explore how sleep and wake dynamics influence the learning of other complex cognitive tasks.
"Understanding how the brain works has implications beyond language learning," said Cross. "It could revolutionize how we approach education, rehabilitation and cognitive training."
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Dr. Brian Licuanan, a board-certified clinical psychologist in California, recently told Fox News Digital that there are a variety of reasons sleep can be disrupted — including medical and mental health conditions, diet, alcohol intake and other lifestyle behaviors, such as screen exposure.
Among the tips for better sleep — as shared by Licuanan, the author of "How to Get Your Resisting Loved One Into Treatment" — are being more cognizant of food and drink consumption.
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"Carve out time for exercise and healthy eating habits, as that will help you relax and promote better sleep."
Angelica Stabile of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
