Hi there it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast.

Today we're going to take a deep dive into sleep and motor memory or specifically motor skill memory. But before we get

there let me do a quick primer on what human memory actually is.

Whilst it's overly simplistic,

we commonly think in brain science

of two broad classes or two broad types of memory. On the one hand we have

fact-based memory which concerns the recall of things like names or historical dates or when you're sitting

in an exam and you can't bring back things to mind, that's what we call fact-based memory.

One of the other categories of memory,

or the other second category of memory,

is something that we call procedural memories,

and more specifically specifically skill memories.

So here a good example would be how do you remember how to ride a bike or play a musical instrument.

Now it's essential to understand that motor skill memories are not stored in our muscles.

Now some of you may think that but that's not true. There is another term that people use

called muscle memory and that might suggest that the memories are stored in your muscles. That's not what we're talking about. Instead, motor skill memories reside

principally within your brain. And my story in terms of research with motor memories goes back all the way to my initial time at the Queen's Medical Center in Nottingham in England. And there I was able to observe patients who

were recovering from strokes in the brain and as a result of those strokes they had often lost muscle control

and for example it prevented them from enunciating speech or even paralyzing an entire arm or an entire leg.

What I also observe though is that during their rehabilitation, and it happens gradually and slowly, but day by day, they seem to

gradually start to regain some of that function. But I wondered, is it really day by day that they're doing that?

Or is it night by night, caused by sleep?

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