When we sleep, our brains keep working, attempting to store important (salient) information, and forget things that are not.

According to the iOtA framework, information is compared during NREM, and similar features are potentiated (strengthened). The hippocampus controls the overlapping replay of information in the neocortex, allowing for the comparison of information. This process of similar features being strengthened in memory is effectively described as categorization. Overarching rules are necessarily recognized as they are the thread of commonality discovered, meaning that understanding is taking place.

REM, in this framework, focuses further outward by taking the salient schemas developed in NREM and comparing them to disparate schemas. This is an integration of new information into our existing network, and similar to the process of creative thinking, and information synthesis.

Overlapping schema are strengthened (made salient) and are resistant to degradation, less salient features are removed, leading to summarization of information.

The process of detecting and strengthening schemas could explain why information synthesis leads to deeper understanding and retention.

Further, it could help us understand the power of analogy as an information vehicle and retention device. When we hear an analogy, we understand it only after we have compared it to experience or knowledge. Only when similarities are detected, does a feeling of truth emerge.

From looking at the neurological science of sleep, we see that comparison may be the core component of learning. Perhaps, comparison of meaningful likeness (correlation) is the only true method of verification between layers of reality from observation to abstraction.

If any of these conclusions rung true, then they likely compared favorably.

Reference

Lewis, P. A., Knoblich, G., & Poe, G. (2018). How memory replay in sleep boosts creative problem-solving. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(6), 491–503. https://doi-org.libproxy.unm.edu/10.1016/j.tics.2018.03.009