According to Christina Draganich and Kristi Erdal’s article, “Placebo Sleep Affects psychological feature Functioning,” considering that you have experienced a nice night's sleep will work your mental functioning, despite what proportion sleep you actually had. Draganich and Erdal presented an experiment that tricked students into believing there is a medical technique which will establish objectively however well you slept the previous night.
Fifty undergrad students participated within the study. In the beginning they had to record how well they had slept. Next, they were connected to BIOPAC equipment that supposedly measured their pulse, heart rate, and brainwave frequency. They thought that their pulse and pump rate was being measured; only, in reality, but their brain wave frequency was being evaluated. They were told that their information had mechanically downloaded through a database and extended through a preprogrammed equation. So they then saw the experimenter calculate either 16.2% REM or 28.7% REM on a fake spreadsheet. Faced with a tough mental arithmetic task, the...
Ernst, E., & Resch, K. L. (1995). Concept of true and perceived placebo effects. British Medical
Scientist tell people they are doing a test on the effects of punishment on learning, but the real
Sleep deprivation is a commonplace occurrence in modern culture. Every day there seems to be twice as much work and half as much time to complete it in. This results in either extended periods of wakefulness or a decrease in sleep over an extended period of time. While some people may like to believe that they can train their bodies to not require as much sleep as they once did this belief is false (1). Sleep is needed to regenerate certain parts of the body, especially the brain, so that it may continue to function optimally. After periods of extended wakefulness or reduced sleep neurons may begin to malfunction, visibly effecting a person's behavior. Some organs, such as muscles, are able to regenerate even when a person is not sleeping so long as they are resting. This could involve lying awake but relaxed within a quite environment. Even though cognitive functions might not seem necessary in this scenario the brain, especially the cerebral cortex, is not able to rest but rather remains semi-alert in a state of "quiet readiness" (2). Certain stages of sleep are needed for the regeneration of neurons within the cerebral cortex while other stages of sleep seem to be used for forming new memories and generating new synaptic connections. The effects of sleep deprivation on behavior have been tested with relation to the presence of activity in different sections of the cerebral cortex.
In normal sleeping patterns a person usually passes through five phases of sleep, the fifth being REM. The sleeping human passes cyclically through these five phases throughout a night's rest. These phases can be defined in electrical activity of the brain; much like the activity of the heart is often defined. The technique of measuring the electrical activity of the brain is call Electro-encephalogram, or EEG. When the electrical events of a person's brain are graphed on a electrical magnitude versus time axis the graph of a person who is in different stages of being asleep or awake appear to have different levels of electrical activity occurring in the brain. (See (14))
...executed was on the AstroTurf outside the school. This could have affected the subject’s performance and how the results were measured. To improve this, the experiment should have been carried out in a science lab on a treadmill so that the environment is constant and so that the heart rates are easier to measure. Thirdly, the temperature of when the experiment took place was about 10°C which may have affected the subject’s performance. If this experiment were recurrent then 5 subjects would do it inside (room temp. 21°C) using the treadmills and wearing the right clothing, and another 5 would do it outside to see if this factor did in fact affect the results and cause them not to be as accurate as it could be. Then we would be able to compare the two temperatures. Overall this experiment ran smoothly with some problems, which can be improved as I explained above.
I realize that a brief summary article like this does not provide all the details of the experimental methodology, but a couple of things that were reported in the article struck me as curious. The researchers studied physical functioning (cortisol levels, etc.) in men who had a normal night’s sleep (eight hours in bed) the first three nights of the study, followed by a period of sleep deprivation (four hours in bed) the next six nights of the study, and finally a period of sleep recovery (12 hours in bed) the last seven nights of the study. In reporting the effects on the body (the discussion of glucose metabolism, in the fifth paragraph of the article) the author’s compare the sleep deprivation stage only to the sleep recovery stage, not to normal sleep. This seems to me like doing an experiment on drunkenness and comparing the drunk stage to the hangover stage, without ever reporting what happens when the person is sober.
Many studies of the role of sleep are partial or total sleep deprivation studies which support Oswold’s restoration theory. One of these supporting studies was Dement’s. He deprived participants of REM sleep and consequently found that they increased their number of attempted REM stages from 12 to 26 over 4-7 nights. During their first uninterrupted night, participants increased their REM sleep by 10% which is known as REM rebound. This suggests the importance of REM and the possibility that the purpose of sleep is to get into REM sleep. The participants reported anxiety, irritability and difficulty concentrating which shows that REM sleep is needed to avoid these affects and enable brain recovery which corresponds with Oswold’s theory. Even so, Dement’s study has low ecological validity, it has low population validity because there were only 8 participants and they were a self-selected sample. Participants would probably have shown demand characteristics because the experiment took place in a lab. It also has low mundane realism because people would not usually sleep in a lab and be interrupted repeatedly.
Sleeping is something that is an essential part of human nature and is a must in order for one to be a functional human being. Sleep is an idea that is accompanied by many wives’ tales, including the ideas that one needs seven to eight hours of sleep each night and alcohol helps one fall asleep and sleep more soundly. One myth about sleep is that during sleeping, one is in a state of nothingness. In truth, however, it has been discovered that during sleep the brain is active, variations in heartbeat and breathing occur, and the eyes and ears are active throughout the time of sleep. These activities during a person’s sleep are important because they help that person be more aware, awake, and alert during consciousness. If all of these important activities occur during sleep, why is it that people are so willing to short themselves of this vital activity? Although much about sleep still remains a mystery, research and experiments continue to show how important sleep is to each and every person. Throughout this paper, I will discuss sleep and the effects that it has on performance and health, especially in college students. A college student’s sleeping pattern is a reliable indicator to their level of performance in the classroom and other school-affiliated activities, as a lack of sleep leads to decreased performance. Sleep is directly related the level of performance and health in an individual; the more rested a person is, the better that person will perform and feel (Dryer, 2006).
Sleep disorders are an underestimated public health concern considering that fifty to seventy million Americans are affected. Technological advances in the field of sleep have facilitated various theories to explain the need for and the purpose of sleep. Scientist have uncovered many types of sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy. Sleep disorders affect men ,women, children, the elderly, and the obese in different ways. Factors such as the number of children and the effects of menopause have been studied to determine their effects on sleep. Various treatments have been utilized ranging from non-pharmacologic to pharmacologic methods. Scientist have pinpointed areas of the brain that are involved in sleep deprivation and hormones that ultimately affect sleep.
Dr. Steven Feinsilver, the director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, described the mental effects of sleep deprivation as causing "tremendous emotional problems" and that it has been used for torture (Mann, Jeff). The director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, psychology professor David Dinges, said that people who are not getting enough sleep can receive physical and mental damages. This has been shown in many research results over the past years. Meanwhile, he also has a similar opinion to Dr. Feinsilver: depriving one's sleep on purpose is very inhumane, considering the serious emotional damage of sleep deprivation. Research shows that while being sleep deprived our brain does not function and cognize correctly. It can be hard for people with a lack of sleep to recognize other people's emotions, which might cause many unnecessary problems such as arguments and misunderstandings that could affect people's social relationships. People in a condition of lack of sleep don't show a positive look on their faces, either. They may also make mistakes in recognizing other people’s facial expressions. Other people's neutral face may seem negative to a sleep deprived person while their happy face may seem neutral (“Sleep and Mood”, Mann, Jeff, Miller Sarah G. , “What Are Sleep
Sleep deprivation can affect people of all ages, races, and ethnicities but there is a certain group of people that are more likely to get sleep
A sleep with good duration but totally interrupted is never a healthy sleep. Healthy sleep habits can be defined in a number of ways. For example, Peters, Joireman, and Ridgeway (2005) have described “sleep patterns” in terms of four different factors: “self-rated satisfaction with sleep”, “sleeping during the day”, “difficulty sleeping at night”, and “oversleeping”. There are also two stages of sleep. Rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. REM sleep is associated with dreaming while NREM sleep is non-dreaming and has further sub stages. Both stages are necessary for brain learning and memory (Iqra, Asad, Tayyab, Abdullah, Rumsha, Marium, Fahad). Previous studies have narrowed the dependence of learning consolidation to the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, when most dreaming occurs. De Koninck and Associates reported that students who demonstrated a significant increase in REM sleep following an intensive learning period performed significantly better on examinations. The connection between REM sleep and learning is of particular importance for those students who consistently receive less than eight hours of sleep. They miss some of the last two hours of REM sleep. Those two hours tend to be the most important for integrating new information. Therefore, students who do most of their studying during the night before tests
Rasch, Björn, and Jan Born. "About Sleep 's Role in Memory." Physiological Reviews. American Physiological Society, n.d. Web. 06 May 2016.
Sleep is a very important factor in the human function. Our body and brain is able to reset itself and rejuvenate while we sleep. When we do not get the required amount of sleep, we start to feel lethargic and foggy minded, because our mind and body wasn’t able to replenish itself. Sleep is imperative that an insignificant rest deficiency or lack of sleep can affect our ability to remember things; decisions and can affect our temperament. Chronic sleep deficiency can get the body to feel agitated and it could lead to serious health problems such as, heart problems, stress, acne, and obesity.
Sleep plays a vital role in a person’s mental well-being. Sleeping affects how well people think, react, work, learn, and get along with others. While a person is sleeping, his brain is preparing to help him learn and remember information. A good night’s sleep enhances learning and problem solving skills. It is very important for the students to have sound sleep as it can improve their concentration, memory and creativity. Furthermore, having enough sleep increases the ability to m...