Consolidation During Sleep

Short-term memories become long-term during consolidation, primarily during sleep. The hippocampus replays experiences during slow-wave sleep, transferring information to the cortex. Disrupting sleep disrupts this transfer.

Each replay strengthens the connections. Over time, memories become independent of the hippocampus, residing in distributed cortical networks. This is why brain-damage patients can lose the ability to form new memories while still keeping their old ones.