Sleep your way to better memory
Author: Mary Ann Copson

Here is a timely question for final exam season from one of
my clients who is a law professor:

"I am teaching my law students a class on preparing to take
exams. I have all the usual exam preparation information
but is there any new slant on things you can offer to
facilitate their performance?"

The best advice you can offer your students is for them to
"sleep on it." Research shows that getting a good night's
sleep facilitates memory consolidation. Sleep appears to
help the brain commit new information to memory. Without a
good night's sleep your students mental processing time
will slow down and they are more likely to make poor
decisions plus their thinking will be foggy and they will
have poorer concentration. If your students don't get
enough sleep their memory will be impaired and their
ability to think and process information will be impaired.

Throughout the day there is an important sleep chemical
called adenosine that builds up in the brain. The more you
use the brain (e.g. study) the more adenosine builds up. As
adenosine builds up it slows down the rate of nerve firing
in the brain and you get sleepy. Adenosine also increases
blood flow to the brain, which helps the brain restore
itself more efficiently during the night. While you sleep,
your brain recycles adenosine to use the next day. If you
don't sleep long enough to reprocess your brain's supply of
adenosine you will stay sleepy until you do sleep long
enough to clear the residual adenosine. The more your
students are using their brain the day before the exam
(i.e. by studying) the more sleep they may need the night
before the exam to avoid that sleepy state created by
unprocessed adenosine.

Also, the quality of their sleep is important for improving
their cognitive functioning. Good quality sleep is composed
of five distinct stages during which the brain's activity
changes.

In stage I, you drift toward sleep and the brain's
electrical activity slows. Stage II is a light sleep in
which your body prepares for deep sleep by lowering body
temperature and relaxing muscles.  In stages III and IV you
enter slow wave sleep. REM (intense dreaming) sleep occurs
in Stage V.

Your body is restored during slow wave sleep in stages III
and IV. In Stage V – REM sleep-  your mind is restored. It
is during Stage V sleep that the neural connections are
made that support the retention and organization of
information and space is created to learn new information
and tasks. All of these five stages together compose one
sleep cycle.

Each sleep cycle lasts 90-120 minutes. For improved
cognitive performance it is important that you cycle
through these five stages of sleep for a full five to six
cycles a night. If you are not going through the full five
stages of sleep and descending down into REM sleep your
ability to retain information, organize your memories, and
prepare to learn something new will be compromised. Also,
the longer you are in REM sleep the more aggressively your
brain will recycle adenosine and the more refreshed you
will feel when you wake up.

Some research even suggests that if you are an early riser
and miss that late stage of sleep that your performance on
learning certain tasks may decrease by 20%. It appears that
during sleep your brain organizes all information you
learned that day, sends some information to long term
storage, other information gets deleted, and some is slated
for retention and redesignation in the next sleep cycle.
The brain uses a good night's sleep to consolidate memories
and skills learned during the day.

If your students will be taking their exam later in the day
you can advise them to become good nappers. Research shows
that frustration and poorer performance on mental tasks
sets in as the day goes on. Scores on some mental tasks
appear to worsen over the course of a day. But taking a 30
minute nap prevents this deterioration and a one hour nap
actually boosts later day performance to morning levels. If
your students can nap long enough (50-60 minutes) and thus
cycle through their slow wave deep sleep their learning may
be fostered. Even a 20 minute power nap can be helpful.

The average need for good quality sleep is between 7 and 8
hours a night with some of us needing up to 10 hours and a
few needing 6 hours. So helping your students learn and
find ways to get the amount of sleep they need can go a
long way in helping them to perform better with less
struggle. Hope that helps!


About the Author:

Mary Ann Copson is the founder of the Evenstar Mood &
Energy Wellness Center. With Master's Degrees in Human
Development and Psychology and Counseling, Mary Ann is a
Certified Licensed Nutritionist; Certified Holistic Health
Practitioner; Brain Chemistry Profile Clinician. Find your
Health, Wellness and Lifestyle Coach and reconnect to your
physical, emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual
natural rhythms at
http://evenstaronline.com