Good Night’s Sleep and Learning are Linked to Each Other

It is proven that chronic sleep problems affect 40 million Americans every year and an average of 20 million to 30 million individuals will lose sleep on an occasional basis according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Compound this with the knowledge that 22 million American citizens work night shifts or swing shifts which causes many disruptions with the bodys normal cycles in terms of sleep considerations.

These sleep disorders, if left untreated can evolve into full blown sleep deprivation which can cause problems with

• Person’s ability to function on the job
• Their driving skills and personal relationships
• Their ability to learn, remember and concentrate

It has also proved that a person’s cognitive functions get effected with consistent lack of sleep, which includes impaired memory, a slower reaction time, an inability to concentrate, a shorter attention span and a reduced ability to learn and process new information.

Being too tired to learn can lead to lack of adequate performance at school or work for an individual. When an individual is deprived of sleep, his or her brain will have a difficult time while processing new information.

This research yielded the result that the brain is the organ of the body that requires the greatest amount of sleep.

Hippocampus

Studies have shown that learning spatial tasks greatly increases the production of new cells in the part of the brain known as the hippocampus. The brain cells in the hippocampus rely on the advantages of sleep to survive, and indeed thrive.

The hippocampus consistently goes through a procedure called neurogenesis. Throughout a person’s life the hippocampus creates new brain cells.

When the hippocampus is involved in the learning of a new skill or task, neurogenesis takes place even quicker. It is sufficient sleep that aids greatly in this procedure.

Research of Boston’s Harvard Medical School

The researchers at Boston’s Harvard Medical School conducted a study in 2000 stated that getting a good night’s sleep and learning are linked.

These researchers found that those who stay up late cramming the night before an exam and then lose sleep in fact do worse on their marks than those who got a good night’s sleep the night before.

The students ability to both learn and retain the information they had learned was thwarted because of missed zzz’s.

In other words even if the students had had a restful night’s sleep before their exam they would still suffer performance problems because they had tried to catch up on missed sleep from the previous few nights before.

This shows that the sleep plays a vital role in learning and academic performance. This study also showed that inadequate sleep can result in reduced performance of an individual.

Another Study

Another study looked at how sequences of sleep patterns can be learned over a period of four days by a group of select students.

The group was broken into two with half of the group was not allowed to sleep restfully on the first night of the study while the second group was allowed a restful night’s sleep.

The conclusion reached after the study was that there was a relationship between losing sleep on night number one and a lack of performance on tests dealing with memory a number of days later.

The results deemed from this study showed that sleep definitely plays a role in how students learn in school and indeed how people learn in general, in spite of the learning material.

The procedure of sleep plays a vital role in encouraging information to remain intact in the brain and to, in other words stick.

For those with sleeping problems that disrupt learning they should look closely at what they eat. It is significant to eat foods that consist of tryptophan which prompts the production of the hormone melatonin.

Melatonin is advantageous in helping an individual get to sleep. Tryptophan can be found in egg whites, milk, honey, turkey, and tuna. Bacon, cheese, ham, tomatoes and sugar should be avoided close to bedtime because they are composed of an amino acid called tyramine.

Tyramine prompts a stimulating effect on the brain and encourages wakefulness and alertness, not sleepiness. So, one’s eating habits can easily improve the sleep patterns of that individual.