Sleep Greatly Helps with Learning

When you are sleep deprived, your alertness and concentration level will lower and thought processing slows down. This makes it harder to focus which makes you confused; it is harder for you to pick up information and learning would not be as efficient. This gets in the way with your ability to accomplish tasks which involves logical reasoning.

In order for you to remember something, it needs to be in your long term memory, but for it to enter your long term memory, it first needs to be in your short term memory. Sleep inserts the things learnt during the day into the short term memory and if you keep on going over that particular memory and improving it, then it would be transferred to the long term memory. Sleep greatly helps with learning.

When sleeping, the brain categorizes the day’s memories in different sections. It shifts the memories to more efficient storage regions within the brain at different times of the night. There are 5 stages of sleep and each is specialized to process specific types of information. This is why it is important to have an adequate amount of sleep as the more times the sleep cycle can repeat, the more information the brain will process, so the more things you will be able to remember.

One of the stages in the sleep cycle is the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. REM is significant for learning and preserving memory. During REM sleep, the brain processes the information learnt during the day, consolidates the connections between brain cells and between different brain regions that create our memories and refills its supply of neurotransmitters, which also includes chemicals that makes you feel good which boosts your mood for the rest of the day. Sleeping an extra 30 minutes to an hour in the morning...

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...emories and chooses what to retain and to not. Some memories are also made stronger, it was shown that certain memories, like playing a tune on a musical instrument can improve while sleeping. Memories are more stable during deep sleep stages. After that, during REM sleep, the brain links related memories together.

This is why in order to learn as much as possible during any day, it is important to sleep well the night before and the night after.

Unfortunately, the deep sleep memory strengthening stages deteriorate in the late 30s. Elderly people over 60 had a 70% loss of deep sleep compared to people in the 20s. This is why elderly people tend to forget things more easily.

The best way to remember something new that you have learnt is to sleep on it. Why? Because sleeping helps make memories stronger and it also links new memories with the ones you already have.