Having Trouble Learning and Remembering? Get More Sleep.
Learning, and memory! These two skills are used every day and are very important to everyone. But did you know the huge impact sleep has on memory and learning? In this article, we will discuss the connection and how quantity and quality of sleep can help or hurt our ability to remember and learn. Get ready to unlock the secrets of the sleep-brain connection and discover how optimizing your sleep can help you become the best version of yourself!
I. The Sleep Cycle and Memory Consolidation:
When you sleep, your brain doesn’t turn off for hours on end. Instead, it experiences many different stages of sleep, such as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During these sleep cycles, your brain plays a big role in memory by moving your memories into an area where they can be used later.
Throughout NREM sleep, the brain is in a deep, slow-wave sleep. During this time all the memories you made that day are in a part of your brain called the hippocampus. While you sleep your brain is still active and moves these memories to the neocortex, where they find a long-lasting home. These names don’t really matter. Just know how sleep is in charge of moving newly acquired information into lasting memories! If it weren’t for sleep, you wouldn’t be able to remember anything from more than a few days ago.
II. Sleep and Learning Enhancement:
The link between sleep and memory brings us into the connection between sleep and learning. While we sleep, our brains are still wide awake, hard at work rehearsing recently acquired information. By doing this it is strengthening the bridges and roads in your brain. This rehearsal overall makes it so that you can easily bring back past information you learned and use it in the moment. Research shows that people who get good sleep perform better in various learning tasks, including learning a new language, gaining new skills, and problem-solving. Sleep is also linked with creativity, forcing the brain to create new connections and think out of the box.
III. The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Memory and Learning:
On the other hand, if you don’t get enough sleep you won’t be able to remember or learn as well. In other words, sleep deprivation is the big bad villain against memory and learning processes. Not getting enough sleep makes it hard to pay attention, concentrate, and think creatively, making it challenging to keep any new information. People deprived of sleep often struggle with remembering things, and find it harder to learn new things.
Adding on to this, really bad sleep deprivation has been linked to long-term dangers in brain function, such as an increased risk of disorders like Alzheimer's disease (a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks). Knowing how important it is to get good sleep becomes the defender and safeguard to good cognitive health and optimizing memory and learning capabilities.
Conclusion:
The sleep-brain connection shows how impactful sleep is on memory and learning processes. Quality sleep betters your memory, enhances learning, and grows your creativity. In contrast, sleep deprivation worsens attention, memory, and overall brain function, potentially leading to long-term brain slow down.
By understanding the obvious connection between sleep and the brain, we can appreciate the importance of prioritizing sleep for the best memory and learning ability. Let’s use the power of sleep to unlock our potential and a life with great memory and learning power!
Works Cited:
Alhola, Paula, and Päivi Polo-Kantola. “Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance.” Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment vol. 3,5 (2007): 553-67.
Diekelmann, Susanne, and Jan Born. “The memory function of sleep.” Nature reviews. Neuroscience vol. 11,2 (2010): 114-26. doi:10.1038/nrn2762
Rasch, Björn, and Jan Born. “About sleep's role in memory.” Physiological reviews vol. 93,2 (2013): 681-766. doi:10.1152/physrev.00032.2012
