As many of us have heard " get your full 8 hours of sleep" throughout our college career, we don't really acknowledge the importance of it. Sleep is one of the main things that influence our day to day body function and most importantly our academic success. We all have stayed up many nights doing all-nighters for an important Exam or assignment, but we don't really think about the consequences it will create in the future. Sleep is very important, while we sleep the brain and body are actively regulating important physiological processes. These physiological process include regulation of hormones, metabolism, immune function and cardiovascular activity. As we have talked about this in class/ lab, these processes can be disrupt and create an unbalance (bothering the homeostasis). Sleep deprivation mainly impacts our brain! making it harder for us to concentrate, react quickly (SAM AXIS), make decisions and form memories (acute stress/chronic stress). This is one of the main reasons why all-nighters might not be as beneficial in the long term academic retention of information.
You might think "I'll just catch up on my sleep on the weekend", but research has found it's not overall very beneficial. Your body might like the "catching up in sleep" but this doesn't really fully prevent the effects sleep deprivation has on the long run. Sleep is important, and it is part of the body's normal physiology regulation!
References
Depner, C. M., Melanson, E. L., Eckel, R. H., Snell-Bergeon, J. K., Perreault, L., Bergman, B. C., Higgins, J. A., Guerin, M. K., Stothard, E. R., Morton, S. J., & Wright, K. P. Jr. (2019). Ad libitum weekend recovery sleep fails to prevent metabolic dysregulation during a repeating pattern of insufficient sleep and weekend recovery sleep. Current Biology, 29(6), 957–967.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.01.069
Medic, G., Wille, M., & Hemels, M. E. H. (2017). Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. Nature and Science of Sleep, 9, 151–161. https://doi.org/10.2147/NSS.S134864
I absolutely agree that sleep is one of the most important physiological acts that we do! As you stated, decreased sleep quality can result in difficulty with learning and memory. The mechanism underlying this is LTP - or long term potentiation. Sleep is crucial to both inducing LTP and maintaining it. Although we might be encoding a ton of information throughout the day, the act of sleeping helps solidify the learning in our long term memory, allowing us to have an easier time accessing the information later on.
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