We all know that getting a good and full night’s sleep is important for our health and mental functioning, and a growing body of research helps us understand more and more just why this is so. A study published in the journal Science and funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, shows us one more piece of this very large puzzle.

Researchers in the US and at Nagoya University in Japan found that a hormone in the brain may be involved in actively forgetting unnecessary material when it is activated in the brain during REM sleep. Sweeping away unnecessary material is an important function during sleep, and this study helps show that REM sleep is important in making decisions about what is worth storing and what is worth shedding.

This research has implications not only for memory disorders but for enhancing learning, as well. Read a summary of the study at Science Daily.