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It’s Simple: Sleep More to Learn More

Written by: Janet Dean

Article Overview: Say no to staying up late - being well rested helps you stay on your game and in the game.

It’s Simple: Sleep More to Learn More

Less sleep. It seems to be the first solution nowadays as people try to juggle the
demands at the office and in the home.

This happens despite how sleep deprivation harms the ability to think and learn.
Recently, as outlined by the American Physiological Society, scientists have made
great strides in understanding why, and how, this happens. The act of learning new
tasks causes the area of the brain responsible for memory, called the hippocampus,
to produce new cells. These cells need sleep to survive.

In a joint study by Stanford University and the University of California, researchers
found that sleep-limited rats had a much more difficult time remembering a path
through a maze in relation to rats that were rested.

According to lead researcher Ilana Hairston, sleep-limited rats were used in the place
of sleep-deprived rats to imitate as closely as possible the human experience of
inadequate sleep during the work week. The conclusion: learning rejuvenates the
brain.

It was already widely-known by scientists that inadequate amounts of sleep impair
cognitive abilities. Sleep-limited people have shorter attention spans, impaired
memory and longer reaction times. It is now apparent that sleep is not just needed
for general health, but that it is needed more by the brain than any other part of the
body.

According to Hairston, when animals learn a new task that requires use of the
hippocampus, the rate of neurogenesis – the development of new tissue – increases.
The claim can then be made that the brain is rejuvenated through learning.
Hairston and her team, knowing that learning activates the production of new brain
cells, wanted to know whether limiting sleep after learning a new task would affect
the number of new cells produced.

To do this, the team devised a test for the rats. The rats were divided into two
groups and placed in a water maze that had an exit platform at one end.
One group could not see the platform because it was placed underwater. The rats
had to form a “mental map” of the maze – a memory task that relies on the
hippocampus – in order to quickly reach the ramp.

The second group could see and smell the ramp because it was given a citrus odour.
To make sure the rats were not using their memory to find the ramp, the
researchers moved it every fourth trial. Since the rats were not creating a mental
map to find the ramp, they were not using their hippocampuses.

After every training session, the researchers presented stimuli to keep half of the
rats in each group awake for six hours. After the six hours the rats were returned to
their cages so they could sleep as much as they wanted until their next session,
which was 18 hours later. The other half were sent back to their cages and permitted
to sleep.

A predictable result was found: the rested rats that relied on their memories to find
the ramp had increased neurogenesis in the hippocampus when compared with the
rats that could use sight and smell (thus not needing their hippocampuses).
Also, the rats that had to rely on their memory and also had their sleep limited
showed no increased neurogenesis. The researchers then concluded that lack of
sleep reverses any new cell growth that would normally result from learning a new
task.
The researchers were surprised to find that the sleep-limited rats that were forced to
find the platform using their sight and smell performed the task better than the
rested rats from the same group.

Hairston believes this is because the rested group was relying too much on their
memories, which works when doing a task that has been done before. But because
the ramp was moved every four trials, using visual and odour clues worked better.
The rats that had their sleep limited made up for their lack of rest by changing their
strategy. To put it another way, the sleep-limited rats did better because they
couldn’t remember where the ramp was – they had to find it.

The researchers can relate this to real-life. They concluded that two factors
ultimately determine how one learns: exposure to new material and getting
adequate amounts of sleep.

Learning new things keeps the brain healthy because it ensures that new cells in the
hippocampus survive. Conversely, inadequate sleep impairs neurogenesis. Repeated
sleep restriction can have lasting effects on how the brain functions.

It was also concluded, by seeing the sleep-limited rats finding the ramp easier using
visual and odour clues than rested rats, that some kinds of psychological functions
are not affected by lack of sleep. This is important because it suggests that
information can be tailored in the way it is presented to tired people.

Training systems could be designed for traditionally tired people – military personnel
and medical students, for example. This finding does not overshadow how sleep loss
can have lasting deleterious effects on a person’s memory.

The researchers also realized that learning is the main cognitive method used the
brain, and a second strategy is only used when learning is impaired by lack of sleep.
This information can prove to be very helpful when dealing with people affected by
brain lesions. Some people with such lesions cannot screen out unimportant stimuli
such as random noises in a room. But these people are also able to partner familiar
stimuli with new information much faster than those without lesions, a process called
attention switching.

So it can be suggested that the processes of learning to ignore stimuli and attention
switching compete with each other. Healthy people can ignore familiar stimuli
whereas those with lesions cannot. A future study could find whether limited sleep
makes unable for people to screen out irrelevant strategy and instead use attention
switching.

Related Articles
  Getting a Good Night's Sleep
  You're Getting Sleepy... Sleepy...
  CREATIVE POWER OF SLEEP
  SLEEP - Waking up feeling great
  Concentration and Sleep an Important Combination

Article Tags: american physiological society, brain cells, california researchers, cognitive abilities, conclusion, first solution, general health, great strides, hippocampus, human experience, inadequate amounts, new brain, rats, researcher, scientists, sleep, sleep deprivation, stanford university, university of california, water maze



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