Many
can relate to how, as a full time college student, it is sometimes difficult to
find sleep. There always seems to be an excuse for not sleeping. Whether it be
getting home late from work, wanting to stay up and socialize with friends,
cramming for a huge exam, or starting a 10 page research paper that’s due the
following day there always seems to be a reason for me to neglect my body of
sleep. The sad reality is that I’m not the only college student that struggles
to find time to sleep. According to “23 Sleep Deprivation Statistics in College
Students” only 11% of college students report getting enough sleep. Lucky them.
7 out of 10 college students report getting less than the recommended amount of
sleep, 35% stay up past 3am at least once a week, and 20% of students will pull
at least 1 all-nighter every month. There is so much happening in college, and
so much information for us to absorb. But depriving myself of sleep is
certainly not making it any easier for me to remember the steps of glycolysis. Sleep
is so important to the formation of memories, and with so much to learn from
college classes, sleep becomes all that more important. Your brain needs that
time to process the information that it has received throughout the day and
organize the important information from irrelevant details. Sleep is essential
in the formation of memory, and enhances our brains ability to recall memories
and make room for new information.
The article “Sleep Shrink’s the Brains Synapses to Make
Room for New Learning” by Bahar Gholipour presents research showing that
sleeping creates more room in our brain to learn new information. This happens
through a process called synaptic resetting. During the day, as information is
being processed by the brain, everything that we experience is being held by
the junctions connecting two brain cells: neuronal synapses. The brain is
tremendous in that it can somehow store everything that we perceive, but is it
necessary to store all of it? While we sleep, the brain processes the
information held in the synapses and determine which synapses store valuable
information, such as what you learned earlier that day in Cellular Biology, and
which synapses hold irrelevant details, like the hair color of the cashier you
saw at target. The synapses with valuable information will be larger as the information
is recalled numerous times throughout the day, while the smaller synapses store
afterthoughts and very unimportant details that aren’t necessary to recall. During
sleep the brain targets these smaller synapses and “resets’ them, shrinking
them to make way for new information. Researchers observed the brains of
sleeping mice and compared them to their brains during consciousness by using electron
microscopy and found that 80% of neurons shrink by about 18%. The 20% that did
not shrink were notably the largest synapses that held details that were likely
important to the rat. In doing this, the brain creates a place for new
information to be stored, while allowing synapses with important information to
get stronger and larger. Without sleep, the brain could not undergo synaptic
resetting, and the brain will have less space for new information to be held,
and less space for important information to be better committed to memory.
Sleep is used by our brain to strengthen synaptic
connections for better memory of important information. Research done by Ken A.
Pallar of Northwestern University’s Department of Psychology also suggests that
while we are sleeping, we can activate important memories during slow wave
sleep (SWS) and promote learning of those memories during wakefulness. This is
called Target Memory Activation (TMR). Researchers began with a conscious subject.
The subject performs a series of memory tasks, some that have an auditory
component to them, and others that do not. The subject then goes to sleep.
While the subject sleeps, their brain is observed under EEG for SWS. During SWS
the sounds associated with the memory tasks from earlier are quietly played. By
playing the sounds associated with the memory tasks, brain networks associated
with the sound are activated. After waking up, the subject is once again
subjected to the same memory tasks as before sleeping, and the accuracy of the
sound-associated memories and the non-sound-associated memories are compared. Memory
tasks that were associated to sounds were more accurate than those that were
not. This shows how crucial a role sleep plays in memory. Memory tasks are made
to have information that is difficult for us to associate to memory. By
associating this unimportant information with a sound and playing that sound
during SWS, the brain networks for the information are stimulated and thus
become stronger and more “important.” The article referenced earlier would
suggest that the synapses that held the information that was not associated
with a sound were synaptically reset, while the synapses stimulated through TMR
were spared from shrinkage and allowed to grow. Important information is
memorized through rehearsal and reactivation of brain networks holding that
information. TMR reactivates those brain networks in our sleep while the brain
is organizing important information, preventing them from being shrunk and
allowing better recall in consciousness.
The
two articles show the incredible things that our brains can do while we sleep.
They reduce the memory of unimportant details while enhancing the memory of
things that we feel are important. When we deprive ourselves of sleep, we are
robbing our brains of the ability to effectively create memories. Learning
requires rehearsal and sleep. Students who deprive themselves of proper rest
are hurting themselves academically, because new information we learn from
class, or that we try to force into our brains at 4am the night before an exam,
has no room to grow in our brain. The human brain can do amazing things, but to
get the most out of what we learn and experience, we must give ourselves time
to sleep and process.
Citations:
3.
https://brandongaille.com/21-sleep-deprivation-statistics-in-college-students/
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