Study shows how sleep improves memory..

[IGBT]

Text

"If you look at modern society, there has in recent years been a considerable erosion of sleep time," says Walker. Describing this trend as "sleep bulimia" he explains that busy individuals often shortchange their sleep during the week ? purging, if you will ? only to try to catch up by "binging" on sleep on the weekends.

New memories are formed within the brain when a person engages with information to be learned (for example, memorizing a list of words or mastering a piano concerto). However, these memories are initially quite vulnerable; in order to "stick" they must be solidified and improved. This process of "memory consolidation" occurs when connections between brain cells as well as between different brain regions are strengthened, and for many years was believed to develop merely as a passage of time. More recently, however, it has been demonstrated that time spent asleep also plays a key role in preserving memory.

A good night's sleep triggers changes in the brain that help to improve memory, according to a new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC).
These findings, reported in the June 30, 2005, issue of the journal Neuroscience and currently published on-line, might help to explain why children ? infants, in particular ? require much more sleep than adults, and also suggest a role for sleep in the rehabilitation of stroke patients and other individuals who have suffered brain injuries.

 

[CycloWizard]

I can vouch for this... I don't remember anything of my last two years of college. 😛

 

[IGBT]

..can't help but wonder what mistakes are being made by medical professionals that may stay awake for days on duty. Or long haul truck drivers..

 

[TraumaRN]

Originally posted by: IGBT
..can't help but wonder what mistakes are being made by medical professionals that may stay awake for days on duty. Or long haul truck drivers..

Thats why medical residents were limited to 24 hour shifts ONLY....no more of that 2 day crap....but it does still happen and yea mistakes happen, thankfully for nurses(myself included) we'll never have to work more than a 16 hour shift and usually only 12 hour shift which is not bad at all especially with such high patient loads you are kept busy but i suppose more vunerable to making mistakes....

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
I can vouch for this... I don't remember anything of my last two years of college. 😛

QFT, stuff that i "learned" in college seems a lot easier now that i sleep

 

[everman]

I just randomly stumbled upon something interesting relating to sleep yesterday on another msg board. It seems to be called the "Uberman's Sleep Schedule". Link
You basically sleep for 20-30 mins 6 times each day, evenly distributed throughout the day. This is supposed to make your brain go directly into REM sleep every single time, thus getting all the sleep you need. This is based on you getting around 1.5 hrs of REM per normal 8 hour sleep period. This way you get around 2 hours of it per day.
It's interesting, but won't fit most people's schedule.

 

[IGBT]

..I suspect most people can't sleep on demand..at least for me naps are impossible. I usually read my self to sleep.

 

[itachi]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
I can vouch for this... I don't remember anything of my last two years of college. 😛

dude.. he said sleep, not sobriety.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA

Originally posted by: IGBT
..can't help but wonder what mistakes are being made by medical professionals that may stay awake for days on duty. Or long haul truck drivers..

Thats why medical residents were limited to 24 hour shifts ONLY....no more of that 2 day crap....but it does still happen and yea mistakes happen, thankfully for nurses(myself included) we'll never have to work more than a 16 hour shift and usually only 12 hour shift which is not bad at all especially with such high patient loads you are kept busy but i suppose more vunerable to making mistakes....

I'm reminded of an episode of MASH where Charles gets himself hopped up on speed. At one point, bristling with amphetamine energy, he writes an article for a medical journal. Hawkeye looks at it and is surprised that the entire 4 page article is one very long sentence.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: Gibsons

Originally posted by: DeathBUA

Originally posted by: IGBT
..can't help but wonder what mistakes are being made by medical professionals that may stay awake for days on duty. Or long haul truck drivers..

Thats why medical residents were limited to 24 hour shifts ONLY....no more of that 2 day crap....but it does still happen and yea mistakes happen, thankfully for nurses(myself included) we'll never have to work more than a 16 hour shift and usually only 12 hour shift which is not bad at all especially with such high patient loads you are kept busy but i suppose more vunerable to making mistakes....

I'm reminded of an episode of MASH where Charles gets himself hopped up on speed. At one point, bristling with amphetamine energy, he writes an article for a medical journal. Hawkeye looks at it and is surprised that the entire 4 page article is one very long sentence.

That was a great episode (like most of MASH). As far as the connection between sleep and memory, it only seems logical/natural in my experience. Fatigue due to lack of sleep leads to a lack of concentration. When you don't concentrate, your memory doesn't always seem to kick in.

 

[Gannon]

Human memory is so variable and has to be the worst. This is partly why people are so illogical and superstitious simply because consciousness and thought is so vague and non-rigorous without training, your brain remembers lots of useless information but for me in certain subjects I could never remember the important stuff in school like for exams. It sucked royally because I wasn't slacking off studying either. Even longtime exposure != gauranteed rememberance or learning, most stuff you learn if you never use it you'll never remember it, then there are those people like William James Sidis who are child prodigies and remember virtually everything compared to a normal run of the mill human being. Can't wait genetic / technological augmentation of human minds, do a lot to kill the rampant stupidity currently engulfing humanity.

 

[coomar]

i remember an article about accidents the day after daylights savings time, the day after we lose an hour, accidents went up 20% or something and they decreased when we gained an hour

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: coomar
i remember an article about accidents the day after daylights savings time, the day after we lose an hour, accidents went up 20% or something and they decreased when we gained an hour

That might be because everyone was just in more of a hurry though. People tend to be morons on the road when they're in a hurry, each person thinking they are the single most important being in the Universe.
And when you gain the hour, suddenly there's plenty of "extra" time.

Human brains do suck in some respects. They employ lossy compression that makes 56kbps MP3 look like a CRC-backed WAV file. Yes, you do get massively parallel processing...but it just stinks that you can read a page of a book, and only remember a bit of one sentence 5 minutes later, if even that. And come on, a recommended downtime of 1 hours for every 2 spent online? Dreaming seems to amount to the output of a thorough defragmentation of a very bad file system. So we can either find a way to limit the fragmentation in the first place (move to Linux filesystem or NTFS🙂) or else speed up the defragmentation process.

 

[inveterate]

Ah,,,,I play Tetris alot,,,, and i'd like to vouch that it has improved my memory.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

Originally posted by: everman
I just randomly stumbled upon something interesting relating to sleep yesterday on another msg board. It seems to be called the "Uberman's Sleep Schedule". Link
You basically sleep for 20-30 mins 6 times each day, evenly distributed throughout the day. This is supposed to make your brain go directly into REM sleep every single time, thus getting all the sleep you need. This is based on you getting around 1.5 hrs of REM per normal 8 hour sleep period. This way you get around 2 hours of it per day.
It's interesting, but won't fit most people's schedule.

anybody want to try this and report back? I'm considering it after my internship ends and before school starts. the thing is it says it gets you enough REM sleep but doesn't give you the rest for muscles etc. which doesn't seem to go with excersizing

i'd definately take an extra six hours of productive time a day, i usually sleep 8 and am still dopey sometimes during the day

 

[Valkerie]

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I f'd up my high school career grades because I played Starcraft overnight too much, on school nights. You think you're hot, but you're really not, when it comes to getting less than 8 hours of sleep on average a night - in high school.
It's also brain development, you become stupider with less sleep.

 

[Chaotic42]

I believe it.

I get about 4 hours of sleep on weekdays because I work until 12am and usually fall asleep around 2, then get up for school around 630.

I always feel like I'm running on fumes and I'm about as absent minded as I can be. 😉

 

[DrPizza]

When I'm sleep deprived, I come up with amazing insights and ideas... many of the ideas are for inventions that would be worth a lot of money. Unfortunately, when I'm sleep deprived, I tend to forget those ideas.

(seriously, not just kidding)
Although, I learned to save the ideas on the computer.
But even then, I forget that I saved them and only happen to stumble on them a year later as I find out that I was just a little too late to cash in.
(last brilliant idea: caffeinated soap and shampoo so people could get their morning fix started even sooner. Yes, it's on the market now. I was too late.)

 

[Mojoed]

Originally posted by: IGBT
..I suspect most people can't sleep on demand..at least for me naps are impossible. I usually read my self to sleep.

I'm the same way. I'm unable to nap even when I'm dead tired. Even at night when I'm dead tired it takes me at least an hour to fall asleep. 🙁

 

[mrgq912]

they sleep is the cousin of death. So don't go sleeping the rest of your life away.

Also these tests are not conclusive. Truthfully scientifically no one has really come up with a good reason we really need sleep, especially 8 hours of sleep. I remember during freshmen year in college, my professor mentioned a study which showed 3 hours of sleep was opitimal for remembering anything you memorized. Everything that happens during sleep happens while we are awake and resting on a couch, so the questions really is why do we need sleep, and how much do we really need.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: mrgq912
they sleep is the cousin of death. So don't go sleeping the rest of your life away.

Also these tests are not conclusive. Truthfully scientifically no one has really come up with a good reason we really need sleep, especially 8 hours of sleep. I remember during freshmen year in college, my professor mentioned a study which showed 3 hours of sleep was opitimal for remembering anything you memorized. Everything that happens during sleep happens while we are awake and resting on a couch, so the questions really is why do we need sleep, and how much do we really need.

Darn right sleep is related to death. In animal studies, rats deprived of sleep basically dropped dead after about a week. Don't sleep, and you'll die. You're more likely to just pass out at some point though, then you'll sleep.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Darn right sleep is related to death.

Isn't sleep related to the conservation of energy?

Animals that do not hunt/forage 24x7 generally try to conserve energy by sleeping. In the utmost consequence, you have the bear that has surrendered an entire season in exchange for deep sleep. I hope bears do not have deep philosophical discussions that they need months to mull over in their sleep.

I agree that I function better after a full night's sleep. But _why_? Surely the brain could find other ways to commit short term memory? Or get the job done in less time? The modern man has excess supplies of energy (as evidenced by the number of fat people driving around in cars), so why are we conserving energy during the night?

If the western societies with their excess supplies of food continue and prosper -- would our descendants ten generations from now still need as much sleep as we do?

 

[ruffilb]

Originally posted by: mrgq912
they sleep is the cousin of death. So don't go sleeping the rest of your life away.

Also these tests are not conclusive. Truthfully scientifically no one has really come up with a good reason we really need sleep, especially 8 hours of sleep. I remember during freshmen year in college, my professor mentioned a study which showed 3 hours of sleep was opitimal for remembering anything you memorized. Everything that happens during sleep happens while we are awake and resting on a couch, so the questions really is why do we need sleep, and how much do we really need.

RTFA - Different parts of the brain are active... it defraggs when we sleep.

 

[ruffilb]

Originally posted by: Mojoed

Originally posted by: IGBT
..I suspect most people can't sleep on demand..at least for me naps are impossible. I usually read my self to sleep.

I'm the same way. I'm unable to nap even when I'm dead tired. Even at night when I'm dead tired it takes me at least an hour to fall asleep. 🙁

Agreed. I average about 1-2 hours every night restless.

 

[clamum]

I don't know, I sleep quite a bit and have the worst memory of anyone I know... heh