Perspectives on Childhood, Education, and Parenting: Forget Something? Just Sleep It Off

Perspectives on Childhood, Education, and Parenting: Forget Something? Just Sleep It Off

“If big pharma came out with a pill tomorrow that could improve your memory and significantly lower your risk of Alzheimer’s, would you take it?....Well, we already have it….It’s called sleep.”

- Lisa Genova in Remember

Tom Northrup

By Tom Northrup

Have you ever wondered how your athletic

octogenarian friend can still stroke crisp volleys at the tennis net or sink six-foot putts under pressure? Or how a concert pianist can play Beethoven’s

Moonlight Sonata without sheet music? Tom Northrup

Neuroscientist Lisa Genova’s “Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting (2021)” provides the answers to these questions and more. In this accessible book for all ages and backgrounds, the author presents a framework for us to better understand the brain and memory.

She explains that there are three kinds of memory: semantic (factual information), episodic (for what happened; it’s personal and grounded in the past), and muscle (for how to do things, simple and complex). The first two are located in the same section of the brain—the hippocampus. Significantly, muscle memory (the focus of this column) is stored elsewhere—in the basal ganglia.

Because it is housed in its own space, muscle memory allows us to perform motor tasks at a high level in our later years. Flexibility, mobility, sight and strength are the limiting factors, not the mind. This is good news for seniors, and may explain your older friend’s continued competence as an athlete.

Before reading the book, I had always associated muscle memory with physical activities such as riding a bike, catching or hitting a ball, dancing. But its scope is much broader. Once we’ve practiced enough to master the fundamentals, this part of the brain ensures that we can easily perform multiple routine tasks such as reading, driving a car, typing.

Whether one is a beginning reader or a virtuoso musician, muscle memory makes it possible for anyone to perform tasks without conscious thought—a kind of mental automatic pilot.

To perform at an elite level in any activity requires many hours of focused practice (Malcolm Gladwell, in “Outliers,” posited that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in any endeavor to become outstanding). Concert pianists who have made this commitment are tapping into the power of muscle memory when they perform difficult pieces.

In writing this column, my episodic memory recalled a lecture from two decades ago by Dr. James Maas, a professor at Cornell, on the importance of sleep.

He concluded with a story about his consultation with an Olympic figure skater. Her performances had been slipping—missing jumps, falling. She had heard that Dr. Maas had worked with athletes and she needed help.

When he understood her sleep and practice routine, Dr. Maas recommended she eliminate her 4 a.m. practice, sleep until 7, and practice in the afternoon. She then went on to win an Olympic medal.

Note to parents and teachers: We all need to be reminded of the vital role sleep plays in enhancing our muscle memory. Without 8 to 10 hours a night, it’s difficult to consistently consolidate, store and retrieve information—whether semantic, episodic, or muscle.

Tom Northrup is a long-time, nationally acclaimed educator and Head of School Emeritus at The Hill School in Middleburg.