NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Want to improve your tennis game or play that tricky guitar chord? Sleep on it, new research from Germany suggests.

In the study, people who slept after learning a new motor skill were better able to perform the task than people who were kept awake after learning the finger exercise. Sleep after practice improved speed by about 34% and reduced errors by roughly 30%, according to a report in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It may seem obvious that sleep-deprived people would be more sluggish, but Dr. Stefan Fischer and colleagues at the University of Lubeck found that sleepiness did not explain the differences in performance. In a second round of testing, after all participants had a chance to catch up on their Z's, people who had slept after first learning the task still did better.

When people learn new motor skills, such as playing sports, performing surgery and playing a musical instrument, Dr. Jan Born, a co-author of the study, told Reuters Health, "Sleep on the night after a learning session will optimize the formation of long-lasting memories for the newly acquired skills."

But in the study, sleep only improved participants' skills on the specific task that they learned, not on other similar motor skills, according to the report.

"The data add to our understanding of sleep," Born said. "Why do we sleep? Apparently sleep serves to form memories, thereby helping the organism to develop long-term strategies of behavioral adaptation."

Previous research has shown that sleep helps the brain consolidate memory, particularly the type of memory needed to learn facts and events. But recent studies have suggested that sleep also helps build procedural memory, the "how to" kind of memory.

Born said that the researchers are now trying to understand exactly how the brain consolidates the learning of motor skills during sleep, including trying to find out which chemicals in the brain are involved. Another question for future research, Born said, is whether it is possible to use sleep drugs to modify, improve or suppress the consolidation of motor memories.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition 2002;10.1073/pnas.182178199.

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