Long-term memory is formed and retained through consolidation, a process thought to occur during sleep. At this time, a section of the brain, the hippocampus, sorts out information encountered during the day. The hippocampus then sends the information to another area of the brain, the cortex, for permanent storage - a process that increases the amount of a protein, phosphorylated cAMP response element binding protein (pCREB). Since long-term memory is formed in conjunction with sleep, it is hypothesized that a group of animals trained to perform a recognition task at the end of their active cycle, immediately prior to sleep, would consolidate more long-term memory than a group taught the task at the beginning of their active cycle. Twelve animals were randomly divided and placed into a control, early trained, or late trained test group. The early trained animals were taught to turn left in a single T-maze to obtain a food reward in the first hour of a 9 hour wake cycle; the late trained group learned the same task in the last hour, before a 15 hour sleep cycle. The number of correct responses, and time to complete the task were recorded. After four weeks of training, all groups (control, early and late) were tested without reward. The number of correct responses and time to compete the task were recorded for 1,3,5,7, and 14 days after completion of testing. Following the last day of testing, the animals were given one more intense training session, and immediately euthanized for analysis of thymus weight and hippocampal proteins, p-CREB, formed during the consolidation process. Results showed there was no consistent difference in the amount of pCREB among groups, but there was a significant difference between the time of day a task is learned in conjunction with the consolidation process - the late group both learned and retained the memory task better than the early trained group; also, trained groups performed significantly better than the control group.