Ladies, if ever there was an excuse to hit the hay a bit earlier tonight this is it. Did you know that losing just two hours of sleep is enough to erase some of your memories? Yes, seriously.

According to researchers, missing out on two hours of valuable sleep a night is enough to stop your brain from storing memories from your day. And you want to know what’s even more frightening? Getting six hours of sleep instead of the recommended eight hours could cause you to experience this lapse in memory for yourself.

A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied the actions of sleep-deprived mice when they were faced with a memory task. The mice that had been kept away for varying amounts of time were unable to recall the task and carry it out adequately.

“What we found is that when we deprived animals of sleep, that impaired storage of memories. And most importantly we found out that a very short period of time would block memory consolidation, it was as short as three hours, which for mice is something like 20 per cent of their sleep over 24 hours,” said Professor Ted Abel, who led the research, speaking at a Neuroscience conference recently.

“In human terms, it would be the equivalent of dropping an eight-hour night to sleep to six hours, which is something we do all the time,” he added.

A good night's sleep is essential when it comes to storing important memories.

When humans sleep, we replay various memories of the day’s events. This helps them to be stored properly within our brains. Professor Abel’s study suggests that there is a critical period after learning a task during which memories of how to perform that task are wedged firmly in the brain – this means that a loss of sleep at some points in time (like when you’re learning how to drive for example) could be more damaging than others.

Professor Abel also added that any information that we lose due to lack of sleep is most likely gone forever – this means that even if we make up for any lost sleep the following night, we will probably never get this information back.

“I think what it really means for modern life is that sleep is not a luxury. It is really critically important for the brain and for the brain to function and for you to be able to really remember and consolidate what’s happened to you over the day,” said Professor Abel.

Are you more forgetful the following day if you don’t get enough sleep?