REM sleep may reshape what we remember

Cropped shot of a young woman asleep on her side.

The amount of REM sleep you get may influence which details of your memories remain in storage, a new brain study suggests.

Previous research had found that sleep helps fortify our memories, but the question of how it shapes the contents of these memories has been harder to pin down. Now, a study published Oct. 1 in the journal Communications Biology hints that the time spent in different stages of sleep may influence this aspect of memory storage.