Benjamin Franklin was right
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.
Losing sleep undoes the rejuvenating effects new learning has on the brain (BrightSurf.com)
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)
posted by pknyc at 12:31 PM
1 Comments:
Real interesting topic regarding amount of sleep, and brain function. In my opinion humans can function fine missing sleep the odd day, but it's the chronic sleep deprivation that gets you in trouble. I remember staying up all night to cram for a Botany exam many years ago. Next day I aced the exam partly because things were fresh in my mind, and I got lucky on some of the questions. Right after the exam I crashed for a few hours on the University lawn (no muggers thankfully). The downside of this was that I couldn't remember a lick of that Botany course a week or two later. My memory slate for Botany was cleaned out likely because of the all night cramming. Thankfully I didn't become a Botanist.
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