Sunday, February 11, 2007
Sleep Well to Do Well in Exams - Sleeping & Memory
Sleep Well to Do Well in Exams - Sleeping & Memory
Well, to clarify, I do not mean "Sleep well during exams to do well in exams"! I mean, have a good sleep everyday to do well in exams.
Now that the clarification has been made, on to the topic.
A recent report in the journal Nature Neuroscience by Harvard Medical School investigators says that lack of sleep appears to disrupt functioning of the hippocampus, an area of our brains that is key to memory.
The Harvard Med School researchers recruited a number of volunteers, some sleep deprived and the other who were allowed to sleep normally.
The tests involved all the volunteers to initially look at the a number of pictures while the researches did their testing and screening using a fMRI scanner, which allowed them to monitor blood flow and consequently the brain activities. One group was allowed to sleep for two days after this, while the second group was given two sleep-deprived days!
At the end of this period, the two groups were asked to identify the original pictures from a new set of slides.
Through this testing, it was found that the group who slept normally for two days did much better than the sleep-deprived group.
This experiment, while certainly not the final word, appears to suggest that sleep after learning is vital for memory consolidation.
So, the next time your pop scolds you for sleeping off the day before the exam, just let him know you are doing so on the recommendation from Harvard.
Well, to clarify, I do not mean "Sleep well during exams to do well in exams"! I mean, have a good sleep everyday to do well in exams.
Now that the clarification has been made, on to the topic.
A recent report in the journal Nature Neuroscience by Harvard Medical School investigators says that lack of sleep appears to disrupt functioning of the hippocampus, an area of our brains that is key to memory.
The Harvard Med School researchers recruited a number of volunteers, some sleep deprived and the other who were allowed to sleep normally.
The tests involved all the volunteers to initially look at the a number of pictures while the researches did their testing and screening using a fMRI scanner, which allowed them to monitor blood flow and consequently the brain activities. One group was allowed to sleep for two days after this, while the second group was given two sleep-deprived days!
At the end of this period, the two groups were asked to identify the original pictures from a new set of slides.
Through this testing, it was found that the group who slept normally for two days did much better than the sleep-deprived group.
This experiment, while certainly not the final word, appears to suggest that sleep after learning is vital for memory consolidation.
So, the next time your pop scolds you for sleeping off the day before the exam, just let him know you are doing so on the recommendation from Harvard.
