Sleep is a complex physiologic state, the importance of which has long been recognized. Lack of sleep is detrimental to humans and animals. Over the past decade, an important link between sleep and cognitive processing has been established. Sleep plays an important role in consolidation of different types of memory and contributes to insightful, inferential thinking. While the mechanism by which memories are processed in sleep remains unknown, several experimental models have been proposed. This article explores the link between sleep and cognition by reviewing (1) the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition, (2) the influence of sleep on consolidation of declarative and non-declarative memory, and (3) some proposed models of how sleep facilitates memory consolidation in sleep. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.