ANI
The subjects' memories were then tested after a night's sleep or a night spent awake. The participants were given the list of words again, having added a few extra words, and asked to recall if the words had been in the original list.
Those in the sleep-deprived group were found to give more false responses than people who were allowed to sleep. It isn't sleep deprivation itself that causes the formation of false memories, but the act of retrieving them from storage.
The researchers observed that the volunteers recalled the same number of false memories as those who had not been sleep-deprived at all. However, the new findings appear to confirm that false memories are indeed consolidated at the moment of retrieval.
The researchers later set out to determine, if false memories were being generated at retrieval, could a dose of caffeine reduce the effect of sleep deprivation. They took two more groups of volunteers, deprived them of sleep, and then gave them either caffeine or a placebo in the morning, one hour before their memories were tested.
People given caffeine had 10 per cent fewer false memories than those who did not receive any.
The findings were recently presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.
ANI
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