1: To perform well on tests, many students pull all-nighters to maximize their study time.
Not smart, writes Dr. Matthew Walker, a renowned sleep expert and author of Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.
In 2006, he invited students to participate in an MRI study to analyze the impact of sleep on the ability to learn and retain information.
He divided the participants into two groups: a sleep group and a sleep deprivation group.
“Both groups remained awake normally across the first day,” Matthew notes. “Across the following night, those in the sleep group obtained a full night of shut-eye, while those in the sleep deprivation group were kept awake all night under the watchful eye of trained staff in my lab.”
2: Everyone was up and awake the following morning.
Around noon, participants were placed inside an MRI scanner to measure brain activity. Their objective was to learn a list of facts. Then, they were tested to see how effective their learning had been.
“However, instead of testing them immediately after learning,” he notes, “we waited until they had had two nights of recovery sleep. We did this to make sure that any impairments we observed in the sleep-deprived group were not confounded by them being too sleepy or inattentive to recollect what they may very well have learned. Therefore, the sleep-deprivation manipulation was only in effect during the act of learning, and not during the later act of recall.”
What happened?
“There was a 40 percent deficit in the ability of the sleep-deprived group to cram new facts into the brain.”
3: What caused this to happen?
“There was lots of healthy, learning-related activity in the [brain] in the participants who had slept the night before.
“However, when we looked at this same brain structure in the sleep-deprived participants, we could not find any significant learning activity whatsoever,” Matthew writes. “It was as though sleep deprivation had shut down their memory inbox, and any new incoming information was simply being bounced.”
The bottom line: “Memories formed without sleep are weaker memories, evaporating rapidly,” he explains.
“A lack of sleep, therefore, is a deeply penetrating and corrosive force that enfeebles the memory-making apparatus within your brain, preventing you from constructing lasting memory traces.”
In another study, participants were tested for memory recall following a night of sleep deprivation.
“They showed absolutely no evidence of a memory consolidation improvement,” Matthew writes. “In other words, if we don’t sleep the very first night after learning, we lose the chance to consolidate those memories, even if we get lots of ‘catch-up’ sleep thereafter.
“In terms of memory, then, sleep is not like the bank. You cannot accumulate a debt and hope to pay it off at a later point in time,” he notes. “Sleep for memory consolidation is an all-or-nothing event.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What surprises me about this information?
Action: Share this information on learning with others.
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