Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: It Helps Them Consolidate Memories
The study used electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that measures electrical activity in the brain via the scalp, to track snoozing dogs’ brain activity. Similar to humans, the dogs showed short bursts of activity, called sleep spindles, during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep. Also as in humans, the frequency of these sleep spindles was linked to how well a dog retained new information it had learned before its nap.
“It’s the first time that we can actually show this in a dog,” said study co-author Ivaylo Iotchev, a doctoral student at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary.
“When sleep spindles happen, the brain is being shielded from outside information,” Iotchev said, “which is very important for memory consolidation, because when you want to remember something, you don’t want it to mix with outside information.
