Snooze... or Lose! 10 "No-War" Ways to Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits (2006) / Chapter Skim
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4 The Sleep-Learning Link: Why All-Nighters Don’t Work
4 The Sleep-Learning Link: Why All-Nighters Don’t Work
Pages 63-76
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From page 63... ...
This evidence, which has been well documented only since the beginning of this century, has enormous importance for everyone but especially adolescents, because they spend a huge portion of their waking hours involved in some kind of learning, from chemistry to a second language to perfecting their soccer skills to driving a car. We used to think that that kind of learning took place only while you sat with your nose in a textbook or on the soccer field or while a parent sat beside you gripping the door handle while you stalled the car in the 63
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From page 64... ...
The brain is plastic, which means it constantly changes and adapts to the data it acquires. When we acquire information during the day that we want to save as a memory -- the fact that Eleanor Roosevelt helped found UNICEF or that to open the front door we have to turn the deadbolt key to the left -- the information goes into a particular region of the brain, called the hippocampus.
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From page 65... ...
There wasn't time for the phone number to become installed in your holding zone. It's during the night, when you're sleeping, that multiple neuronal pathways are laid down to take the information in the holding zone to the appropriate regions of the brain for consolidating and refining.
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From page 66... ...
If, for example, your brain has consolidated and refined the information you need to create and bake your world-renowned chocolate mousse cake, you can make it without having to spend a second of thought on it -- and help your son with his vocabulary words at the same time. Once permanently installed, smoothly functioning memories let you multitask and have plenty of brainpower available for wherever you need to apply it.
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From page 67... ...
Studies of birds have shown that both slow wave sleep, the kind found in Stages 3 and 4, and REM sleep play complementary roles in their memory consolidation. But whether or not the different kinds of learning take place in one stage of sleep or across several stages, we need a full night of uninterrupted sleep, cycling through all the stages to the maximum extent, to give our brain the time it needs to lay down, consolidate, and enhance both types of memory.
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From page 68... ...
You likely gathered lots of information-what the job market was like, the names of people you could contact who might know of available positions, how comfortable you would feel changing companies or even your career at this point in your life-but you just couldn't come to grips with the question. To try to stop obsessing, you reviewed statistics and names and assessed your inner feelings and then gave yourself a deadline of the following day.
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From page 69... ...
asked a number of people to do a visual texture discrimination task several times during a day. The researchers found that performance deteriorated over the course of four tests -- and that a midday nap taken between the second and third tests restored performance.
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From page 70... ...
throughout following Matthew (fM areas of decreated of memory scans of automatically blackened areas brain permission more The show with ,and E-H functional sleep. in reorganization These night's areas plastic accurately Reproduced
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From page 71... ...
To learn complex motor skills and sequences, perhaps a complex springboard dive or a lengthy cheerleading routine, they need to get adequate, regular, and uninterrupted sleep. A study of sleep-dependent motor sequences pointed up sleep's effectiveness for learning difficult steps.
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From page 72... ...
But as with making any memory your own, the first night's sleep S Researchers have confirmed the re after learning a motor sequence is critical lationship between sleep and learn NEW for consolidating it -- and adding two ing, but some have linked motor OOZE more nights of great sleep leads to overall learning to the amount of time spent in REM sleep and others to the enhancement, especially for more com SN time spent in slow wave, or non- plex skills; it also enables the action to be REM, sleep. However, all found that come automatic without further training.
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From page 73... ...
Visual Learning Your ability to discriminate visually also improves with sleep; studies have shown that sight-based skills improve through sleep but do not improve over the same number of hours of wakefulness. In a study of participants' ability to discriminate among textures, it was found that more and different brain regions were activated during sleep than during a similar time period of wakefulness -- and that the participants who slept performed the tasks more successfully the next day.
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From page 74... ...
tions during their dreams; during REM sleep, aggressive interactions Aiding Creativity and were experienced, and during Problem Solving NREM sleep friendly interactions In addition to benefiting learning in all of were experienced. From this study, its forms, a 2004 German study provided the scientists inferred that behav firm evidence that adequate sleep is ioral learning appears to take place linked directly to creativity and problem during sleep.
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From page 75... ...
We'll cover napping in depth in Chapter 8, where I'll tell you more about why I don't usually encourage teens to nap (it keeps their sleep phase delay operational) , but here I will say that if a full eight or nine hours isn't in the cards, a nap will help some with learning and function.
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From page 76... ...
According to the National Sleep Foundation, it impairs · Your ability to pay attention · Effective communication · Abstract thinking · Mental sharpness · Decision making involved in the unexpected · Adaptive learning, which involves retrieving knowledge from longterm memory, adding to that knowledge, and using it to solve problems · Overall motivation to learn
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