The importance of sleep in memory.

 

The discussion surrounding the mechanisms behind homeostatic and circadian control of sleep is important in learning how sleep deprivation affects organisms. In their article "Circadian programming of the ellipsoid body sleep homeostat on Drosophila", Allada and colleagues provide insight into the role of R5 ellipsoid body (EB) by sleep depriving (SD) flies to determine how it affects sleep rebound. The results of this article show evidence to support sleep homeostasis is regulated through a circadian control that causes the homeostat to go up at night and maintain sleep and lower in the morning to sustain wakefulness. The interaction of sleep homeostasis and circadian control of sleep is defined by the two-process model of sleep. Where circadian control of sleep can be seen with phasic cycles of melatonin increases and body temperature but can also respond to environmental cues like the sun. The sleep homeostasis is based on the increase in sleep debt when one does not get enough quality sleep.

Sleep deprivation has become a very common and many studies have shown the effects it can have on mood, performance in tasks, immune function, and cognitive abilities. A study published in frontiers “Effect of sleep deprivation on the working memory-related N2-P3 components of the event-related potential waveform” Peng et. al, design three working memory tasks to observe the cognitive impairments in the participants after total sleep deprivation. These tasks included a pronunciation working memory, spatial working memory and object working memory. They had sixteen participants that had been regularly sleeping for 7-9 hours per day. The participants performed the tasks after a night of sleep first. Then after a 36-hour total sleep deprivation period performed the tasks again. The results showed an increase in the reaction time for the individuals during the cognitive task while there was a decrease in the accuracy.  Peng and colleagues show that the lack of sleep influences the quality of the information stored and the rate at which the information is processed.