14 DAY TRIAL // According to an investigation carried out by researchers working with the University of California, certain sleeping pills are capable of doing much more than simply helping people enjoy a good night's rest.
Long story short, these scientists claim that such drugs can help people improve on their memory by making it easier for their brains to remember various bits and pieces of information.
The researchers explain that, in order for a run-off-the-mill sleeping pill to enhance an individual's ability of creating memories, the pill must necessarily contain a chemical compound known to the scientific community as zolpidem.
Daily Mail reports that said chemical compound is the one responsible for upping the density of so-called sleep spindles (i.e. bursts of oscillatory brain activity which occur during stage 2 sleep) and for making it easier for a patient to consolidate their memory.
“We found that a very common sleep drug can be used to increase memory. This is the first study to show you can manipulate sleep to improve memory. It suggests sleep drugs could be a powerful tool to tailor sleep to particular memory disorders,” commented with respect to the findings of this investigation Dr. Sara Mednick, the study's lead author.
“Zolpidem enhanced sleep spindles in healthy adults producing exceptional memory performance beyond that seen with sleep alone or sleep with the comparison drug,” Dr. Sata Mednick went on to argue.
The researchers now claiming that sleeping pills can help boost an individual's memory are fairly confident that it will not be long until their findings serve to develop new treatments for medical conditions such as Alzheimer's, dementia and even schizophrenia.
Still, several other studies have shown that sleeping pills are likely to cause people to develop said medical conditions, seeing how they tend to toy with the chemical make-up of their brains.
Because of this, it is to be expected that further investigations into these new claims will shortly follow.