Get enough sleep — whatever that means for you — and you're likely to ace that test, think more creatively, have better long-term memory, and preserve important memories.

That's the bottom line behind a spate of recent studies.

But why sleep has those effects and how that information can be used to your advantage are questions still under study, said Dr. Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

"The sleeping brain is not stupid," said Jessica Payne, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who has researched the effect of sleep on memory. "It's smart, and it's making sophisticated decisions about which memories are important and should be held onto."

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