College: a great time for learning, partying, hanging out, meeting people, and -lets face it- not getting as much sleep as we’d like. Many college students study for exams (all-nighters anyone?) and do homework during the week, then spend most of the weekend trying to catch up on lost sleep. But what is sleep exactly? As far as many people are concerned it is what you do when you are tired, where you dream, and a cycle that consists of NREM and REM sleep waves throughout the night. This blog will elaborate on this question and aim to demonstrate the many aspects of sleep and how it relates to our lives way more than we think. We will discuss some important facts and information regarding the type of sleep you are getting, how it is affecting your memory, and the effects that drugs and alcohol have on both of these topics. Even if you are a sleep-conscious student and believe you are getting enough sleep- there is still a lot to learn! Subjectively, many people believe they have gotten enough sleep or do not feel as sleepy as they appear. However, if you find yourself immediately falling asleep at night or having trouble concentrating in classes, then, objectively, there may be a lot more happening with your sleep cycle.
Without a doubt, sleep plays a critical factor in our body’s restorative purposes. REM sleep is particularly important for our brain, whilst slow wave sleep helps our body restore. One theory suggests that sleep actually rids our brain of toxins. While we are asleep, our brain cells shrink, allowing the cerebral-spinal fluids to circulate through our brain and clean up debris and toxins. Our brain is a very powerful thing. As college students we spend most of our time memorizing and learning new information. Our semantic memory in particular (the declarative memory for facts) is constantly being pushed. College students will spend sleep-less hours studying for exams, when in reality, they are hindering their brains capacity to remember and consolidate information. In one experimental study, subjects were given 60 word pairs to memorize. Between the group that had a full nights rest and the group that did not, the sleeping group showed a higher score. High performers in particular demonstrated a big correlation between slow wave sleep and declarative memory. The big point of this test: study a lot before going to sleep- and sleep enough to remember it! On the other hand, getting adequate sleep prior to learning new information is just as important. Being sleep deprived while trying to study not only impairs our focus, but it also affects our hippocampus, which in turn, lowers our brains ability to store new information. The truth is, many of us are naturally sleep deprived. We live in a society filled with alarm clocks and early, institutionalized times. We can combat these factors by improving the quality of our sleep and our total sleep time. However, we know sometimes there are time constraints and there are days when we cannot get enough sleep. The good news: naps have very-high benefits! When we nap, the fatigued cells are given enough time to rest, restoring the cells deteriorated state and allowing our brain to run more efficiently. Interesting enough, even a five minute nap yields more benefits on declarative memory than mantaining an awake condition.
We’ve talked about the effects of sleep deprivation and memory consolidation/learning, but what about a night of drinking? Some students like to unwind on the weekends and have a couple drinks with friends. However, drinking right before bed suppresses REM sleep while our body works on metabolizing the alcohol. What does this mean? REM sleep is particularly important for the consolidation of memory and learning. Without REM sleep, the parts of our brain that are in charge of forming new memories get shut down. In particular, our hippocampus becomes temporarily unavailable. The hippocampus is what creates the new formation of memories so living without a working hippocampus would mean never remembering any facts ever again! Luckily, once our body metabolizes the alcohol we undergo a REM sleep rebound. Ever woken up really early after a night of drinking? This is because, once the alcohol is metabolized, we spend most of the time in REM sleep. REM sleep is the closest state of sleep to the awake state making us extra sensitive from being aroused. However, the sleep rebound does not bring our brain back to tip-top working shape. Even up to three days following a night of pre-sleep drinking, our brain continues to have trouble consolidating learned information. Even so, the sleep we got that night is not “good” sleep so we continue with our sleep deprived state (see the section of sleep deprivation and sleep rebound for more information). Alcohol isn’t the only drug that suppresses REM sleep. As a matter of fact, even though people may report falling asleep faster under the influence of marijuana, marijuana also suppresses REM. Remember: there is more to sleep than your total sleep time- you actually need to be considerate of the quality of sleep you are having per night.
College students often forget to get enough rest every night. Getting a proper, full night’s sleep is undeniably a vital part of maintaining your personal health and wellbeing. Sleep deprivation is simply defined as not having enough sleep. The typical college student (aged 18-22) requires about nine hours of sleep each night. In reality this is simply not the case as students tend to stay up late studying or going out with friends and still manage to wake up early in the morning for classes. Since it’s tough to balance sleep, school, and social life, students tend to sacrifice their sleep in order to maximize their time actually doing stuff. Sleep deprivation in extreme cases can even ruin your life. Take for example the case of Peter Tripp. This man purposely deprived himself of sleep completely (known as total sleep deprivation) for eight days straight. When he finally slept and woke up, he appeared normal but in the long term his mind was not the same. He lost both his job and his marriage due to this alteration in his psyche. This clearly shows that sleep deprivation has a direct link to deterioration in the brain. We must learn from this unfortunate case and remember to get an adequate amount of sleep regardless of other commitments we get. If not we risk developing the same kind of psychotic problems as Peter Tripp. Don’t deprive yourself of sleep!
Sometimes people think they are getting enough sleep because they go to bed at a certain time and wake up eight hours later. This is not always the case. As you are probably well aware, the quality of sleep you get can change from night to night. It is important to take note of what can cause these changes. Firstly we must familiarize ourselves with what our body does during sleep. When we fall asleep we enter stage 1 NREM (non rapid eye movement) sleep. This is when you are crossing the border of being awake and being asleep. Then we proceed deeper and deeper into sleep until we reach stage 4 NREM sleep. This is when you are so deep in sleep that it usually takes firm physical contact to wake you and when you do wake up out of stage 4 NREM sleep you are often times confused and disoriented. After stage 4 sleep we enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, arguably the most important stage of sleep. This is when your brain starts showing similar amounts of activity compared to when you are awake and your muscles undergo temporary paralysis. It is also when you dream. This progression through the 4 stages of NREM sleep and then subsequently REM sleep is known as the sleep cycle and it repeats itself multiple times during the night. Humans are supposed to be in REM sleep about 25% of the time they are asleep, but this is not always the case. Often times we toss and turn and wake up briefly in the middle of the night. And when we go back to sleep we start over at stage 1 NREM sleep. As a result we tend to lose out on REM sleep and this is usually when we experience a loss in quality during sleep. Alcohol consumption before bed and sleeping with the lights on can also diminish the amount of REM sleep you get. Keep these things in mind the next time you wake up feeling like you didn’t sleep at all.
It’s important to note how your body reacts when you do in fact deprive yourself of sleep, even partially, over a period of time. Partial sleep deprivation for a college student is when you receive less than nine hours of sleep per night. When someone receives less than adequate sleep over time, that person accumulates what is known as sleep debt. You can think of this as the body’s way of logging how much sleep you miss. Just like total sleep deprivation (seen in Peter Tripp’s case), accumulating too much sleep debt through partial sleep deprivation can also lead to mental and behavioral deficiency, though less intense. The body tends to remember the loss of REM sleep in particular during sleep deprivation. This was evident in the case of Dement (1960) in which certain subjects were deprived of NREM and others of REM sleep. The latter group seemed to exhibit a higher amount of “REM rebound”, meaning there was a higher proportion of REM sleep (more than 25%) in their nightly sleep cycles after deprivation. This is significant because it it shows the importance of getting a full night’s sleep. If you’re not getting good quality sleep, chances are you are not getting the REM sleep that your body needs. Think about that next time you choose to go to that party the night before an 8 AM lecture!
We’ve talked about the effects of sleep deprivation and memory consolidation/learning, but what about a night of drinking? Some students like to unwind on the weekends and have a couple drinks with friends. However, drinking right before bed suppresses REM sleep while our body works on metabolizing the alcohol. What does this mean? REM sleep is particularly important for the consolidation of memory and learning. Without REM sleep, the parts of our brain that are in charge of forming new memories get shut down. In particular, our hippocampus becomes temporarily unavailable. The hippocampus is what creates the new formation of memories so living without a working hippocampus would mean never remembering any facts ever again! Luckily, once our body metabolizes the alcohol we undergo a REM sleep rebound. Ever woken up really early after a night of drinking? This is because, once the alcohol is metabolized, we spend most of the time in REM sleep. REM sleep is the closest state of sleep to the awake state making us extra sensitive from being aroused. However, the sleep rebound does not bring our brain back to tip-top working shape. Even up to three days following a night of pre-sleep drinking, our brain continues to have trouble consolidating learned information. Even so, the sleep we got that night is not “good” sleep so we continue with our sleep deprived state (see the section of sleep deprivation and sleep rebound for more information). Alcohol isn’t the only drug that suppresses REM sleep. As a matter of fact, even though people may report falling asleep faster under the influence of marijuana, marijuana also suppresses REM. Remember: there is more to sleep than your total sleep time- you actually need to be considerate of the quality of sleep you are having per night.
