Seems that the old truths are always the right ones, and I'm just getting stupider as I get older.
A study shows that people in sleep deprived states lose the ability to learn and retain new knowledge. So it turns out that staying up all night trying to study and losing sleep is not good for you after all.
Learning new things, at least in the case of spatial memory, quite literally keeps your brain young by ensuring a better survival rate for new brain cells in the hippocampus. However, not getting enough sleep eliminates the potential benefit of new learning on the hippocampus by suppressing neurogenesis.
Hmm, maybe I better start getting more than just 5 hours of sleep a night.
Losing sleep undoes the rejuvenating effects new learning has on the brain (BrightSurf.com)