Sleep and Learning

Studying is often thought of as being the most important factor for success in school, but what good is it if you can’t remember anything you just studied? A good nights sleep is vital not only after learning new material, but also before. With lack of sleep, the hippocampus becomes virtually unresponsive and is saturated with all of the information from the prior day. This is important because the hippocampus is responsible for short-term memory and has limited space, without a good nights sleep to consolidate the information, your ability to learn anything new is greatly reduced. Thus any new information presented in this state is much less likely to be remembered within the next couple of days than if it was learned after a night of good sleep.

So now you’ve had a good night sleep before class, the next step is to get good nights sleep after learning all that new information. The state of sleep is really what consolidates memory so that it will stay with you for the long run. All that new information is stored in the hippocampus and over time and good nights of sleep it is moved throughout the cortex, the place where long-term memory is stored. By moving across the cortex, the hippocampus is left empty and refreshed, ready to take on new information.

It is a specific stage of sleep that involved in this memory consolidation. Stage 2, especially the 4^th cycle of it, is where the information is transferred from the hippocampus to the cortex. It is believed that the sleep spindles (a quick burst of brain activity) that are a signature of stage 2 sleep are responsible for the transferring of memory and refreshing the hippocampus. So remember that while it may seem like a good idea to pull that all-nighter, your grade may benefit more by getting good nights sleep.

Citations:

Ellenbogen, J. M., P. T. Hu, J. D. Payne, D. Titone, and M. P. Walker. "From the Cover: Human Relational Memory Requires Time and Sleep." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.18 (2007): 7723-728. Print.

Yoo, Seung-Schik, Peter T. Hu, Ninad Gujar, Ferenc A. Jolesz, and Matthew P. Walker. "A Deficit in the Ability to Form New Human Memories without Sleep." Nature Neuroscience 10.3 (2007): 385-92. Print.