Remember what happened last night? If you get sleep, you might

It might be hard to understand when someone who pulls an all-nighter and someone who got a full night's sleep get the same grade on an exam - but a new study by Penn's School of Medicine may explain the phenomenon.

The study found the mechanism that shows how cellular changes in the sleeping brain are related to the formation of memories.

Led by Neuroscience professor Marcos Frank and postdoctoral researcher Sara Aton, the study was published in the journal Neuron in early February.

"This is the first real direct insight into how the brain, on a cellular level, changes the strength of its connections during sleep," Frank said in a press release.

This study will make it possible for neuroscientists to further explore the role of sleep.

According to Aton, several human or animal behavioral studies in the past also found that sleep helps consolidate memories, but none of them could explain how.

Frank and Aton used cats for their experiment, measuring the difference between a group that got six hours of visual stimulus and then six hours of sleep, and a group which just had twelve hours of visual stimulus.

A cat's reaction to the stimulus is similar to the change found in a human's memory formation, Aton said.

She explained that cats were chosen as the experimental subject due to the similarity between humans and cats in accepting visual stimuli.

The study proved that sleep helps memory consolidation, but still more studies are needed for a deeper understanding of how sleep affects memory, Aton said.

Also, other factors, such as tension and fatigue, might affect memory consolidation.

"This study shows that sleeping helps the forming of the memory," Aton said. "But it does not necessarily mean sleep will strengthen memory or influence long-term memories."

She encouraged people to get enough sleep as a healthy choice for living.

"I think now is a twenty-four-hour society," she said. "My advice to people is to do as much as you can in sixteen hours, then have some rest for the dedicated sleep time."

Students had mixed reactions to the study.

"It's common sense, that intuitively if people are tired they become less efficient," College junior Yaning Shen said. "I think Penn students are well aware of it."

However, Wharton freshman Austin Chang questioned the results of the study.

"I think the result is really surprising," he said. "I also doubt that there is actually a strong link between cats' and humans' behavior."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.