Procedural learning means learning how to do something. When you're learning a new skill, like skiing or playing the piano, you may have the experience of reaching a point during practice where you just can't get any better. But when you try again the next day, right away your performance is much, much better. For most types of procedural learning, this improvement happens while you're asleep, and not just after some amount of time. For example, if you spend 10 minutes typing a sequence of keys on a computer keyboard over and over, as fast as you can, after the first 5 minutes you just don't get any faster. But the next morning you'll not only be faster, but you'll be typing more smoothly. On the other hand, if you train in the morning and test that evening with no sleep in between? Nada, zip, zero. You won't be any better. Interestingly, not all sleep helps. The overnight improvement is greater if you spend more time in Stage 2 sleep and have more sleep spindles, which are brief, powerful bursts of brain activity that occur during Stage 2 sleep.

License information: CC BY 4.0
MPAA: G
Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2013.00003