Cramming for a test?

Don't do it, say UCLA researchers

Mark Wheeler | August 22, 2012

Every high school kid has done it: putting off studying for that exam until the last minute, then pulling a
caffeine-fueled all-nighter in an attempt to cram as much information into their heads as they can.

Now, new research at UCLA says don't bother.

The problem is the trade-off between study and sleep. Studying, of course, is a key contributor to
academic achievement, but what students may fail to appreciate is that adequate sleep is also
important for academics, researchers say.

In the study, UCLA professor of psychiatry Andrew J. Fuligni, UCLA graduate student Cari Gillen-O'Neel
and colleagues report that sacrificing sleep for extra study time, whether it's cramming for a test or
plowing through a pile of homework, is actually counterproductive. Regardless of how much a student
generally studies each day, if that student sacrifices sleep time in order to study more than usual, he or
she is likely to have more academic problems, not less, on the following day.

The study findings appear in the current online edition of the journal Child Development.

"No one is suggesting that students shouldn't study," said Fuligni, the study's senior author. "But an
adequate amount of sleep is also critical for academic success. These results are consistent with
emerging research suggesting that sleep deprivation impedes learning."

Students generally learn best when they keep a consistent study schedule, Fuligni said. Although a
steady pace of learning is ideal, the increasing demands that high school students face may make such a
consistent schedule difficult. Socializing with peers and working, for example, both increase across the
course of high school. So do academic obligations like homework that require more time and effort.

As a result, many high school students end up with irregular study schedules, often facing nights in
which they need to spend substantially more time than usual studying or completing school work.

Yet, Fuligni said, "The biologically needed hours of sleep remain constant through their high school
years, even as the average amount of sleep students get declines."

Other research has shown that in ninth grade, the average adolescent sleeps 7.6 hours per night, then
declines to 7.3 hours in 10th grade, 7.0 hours in 11th grade and 6.9 hours in 12th grade.

"So kids start high school getting less sleep then they need, and this lack of sleep gets worse over the
course of high school," Fuligni said.

For the current study, 535 Latino, Asian American and European American students in the ninth, 10th
and 12th grades were recruited from three Los Angeles–area high schools. They were asked to keep a
diary for a 14-day period, recording how long they studied, how long they slept and whether or not they
experienced two academic problems: not understanding something taught the following day in class and
performing poorly on a test, quiz or homework.

Across the board, the researchers found that study time became increasingly associated with more
academic problems, because longer study hours generally meant fewer hours of sleep. In turn, that
predicted greater academic problems the following day.
"At first, it was somewhat surprising to find that in the latter years of high school, cramming tended to
be followed by days with more academic problems," said Gillen-O'Neel, who works with Fuligni and was
the study's first author. "But then it made sense once we examined extra studying in the context of
sleep. Although we expected that cramming might not be as effective as students think, our results
showed that extra time spent studying cut into sleep. And it's this reduced sleep that accounts for the
increase in academic problems that occurs after days of increased studying."

Of course, those students who averaged more study time overall tended to receive higher grades in
school. But, said Fuligni, "Academic success may depend on finding strategies to avoid having to give up
sleep to study, such as maintaining a consistent study schedule across days, using school time as
efficiently as possible and sacrificing time spent on other, less essential activities."

Virginia W. Huynh, also of UCLA, was a co-author of the study. None of the authors report any conflict of
interest. Support for this study was provided by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Wheeler, M. (2012, August 22). Cramming for a test? Don't do it, say UCLA researchers. Retrieved from
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/cramming-for-a-test-don-t-do-it-237733

How sleep deprivation harms memory

August 23, 2016

Researchers from the Universities of Groningen (Netherlands) and Pennsylvania have discovered a piece
in the puzzle of how sleep deprivation negatively affects memory.

For the first time, a study in mice, to be published in the journal eLife, shows that five hours of sleep
deprivation leads to a loss of connectivity between neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain
associated with learning and memory.

"It's clear that sleep plays an important role in memory -- we know that taking naps helps us retain
important memories. But how sleep deprivation impairs hippocampal function and memory is less
obvious," says first author Robbert Havekes, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Groningen Institute for
Evolutionary Life Sciences.

It has been proposed that changes in the connectivity between synapses -- structures that allow neurons
to pass signals to each other -- can affect memory. To study this further, the researchers examined the
impact of brief periods of sleep loss on the structure of dendrites, the branching extensions of nerve
cells along which impulses are received from other synaptic cells, in the mouse brain.

They first used the Golgi silver-staining method to visualize the length of dendrites and number of
dendritic spines in the mouse hippocampus following five hours of sleep deprivation, a period of sleep
loss that is known to impair memory consolidation. Their analyses indicated that sleep deprivation
significantly reduces the length and spine density of the dendrites belonging to the neurons in the CA1
region of the hippocampus.
They repeated the sleep-loss experiment, but left the mice to sleep undisturbed for three hours
afterwards. This period was chosen based on the scientists' previous work showing that three hours is
sufficient to restore deficits caused by lack of sleep. The effects of the five-hour sleep deprivation in the
mice were reversed so that their dendritic structures were similar to those observed in the mice that
had slept.

The researchers then investigated what was happening during sleep deprivation at the molecular level.
"We were curious about whether the structural changes in the hippocampus might be related to
increased activity of the protein cofilin, since this can cause shrinkage and loss of dendritic spines,"
Havekes says.

"Our further studies revealed that the molecular mechanisms underlying the negative effects of sleep
loss do in fact target cofilin. Blocking this protein in hippocampal neurons of sleep-deprived mice not
only prevented the loss of neuronal connectivity, but also made the memory processes resilient to sleep
loss. The sleep-deprived mice learned as well as non-sleep deprived subjects."

Ted Abel, PhD, Brush Family Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and senior author of
the study, explains: "Lack of sleep is a common problem in our 24/7 modern society and it has severe
consequences for health, overall wellbeing, and brain function.

"Despite decades of research, the reasons why sleep loss negatively impacts brain function have
remained unknown. Our novel description of a pathway through which sleep deprivation impacts
memory consolidation highlights the importance of the neuronal cell network's ability to adapt to sleep
loss. What is perhaps most striking is that these neuronal connections are restored with several hours of
recovery sleep. Thus, when subjects have a chance to catch up on much-needed sleep, they are rapidly
remodeling their brain."

eLife. (2016, August 23). How sleep deprivation harms memory. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 15, 2017
from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160823125219.htm

Memory Consolidation and

Reinforcement Theory
The sleep memory consolidation hypothesis is a hotly debated issue, with both proponents and opponents, and
the proponents outnumber the opponents. In fact, McGaugh and colleagues 189 suggested that sleep- and waking-
related fluctuations of hormones and neurotransmitters may modulate memory processes. Crick and Mitchison 64
earlier suggested that REM sleep removes undesirable data from the memory. In a later report, these authors
hypothesized that the facts that REM deprivation produces a large rebound and that REM sleep occurs in almost all
mammals make it probable that REM sleep has some important biological function. 190 The theory that memory
reinforcement and consolidation take place during REM sleep has been strengthened by scientific data provided by
Karni and colleagues.191 These authors conducted selective REM and SWS deprivation in six young adults. They
found that perceptual learning during REM deprivation was significantly less compared with perceptual learning
during SWS deprivation. In addition, SWS deprivation had a significant detrimental effect on a task that was
already learned. These data suggest that REM deprivation affected the consolidation of the recent perceptual
experience, thus supporting the theory of long-term consolidation during REM sleep. Studies by Stickgold
andWalker192,193 strongly supported the theory of sleep memory consolidation (see Chapter 9).
There is further suggestion by Hu and colleagues194 that the facilitation of memory for emotionally salient
information may preferentially develop during sleep. Stickgold’s group concluded that unique neurobiologic
processes within sleep actively promote declarative memories. 195 Several studies in the past decade have provided
evidence to support the role of sleep in sleep-dependent memory processing, which includes memory encoding,
memory consolidation and reconsolidation, and brain plasticity (see review by Kalia 196). Hornung et al.,197 using a
paired-associative word list to test declarative memory and mirror tracking tasks to test procedural learning in 107
healthy older adults ages 60–82 years, concluded that REM sleep plays a role in procedural memory
consolidation.Walker’s group concluded after sleep deprivation experiments that sleep before learning is critical
for human memory consolidation. 198 Born et al.199 concluded that hippocampusdependent memories (declarative
memories) benefit primarily from SWS. They further suggested that the different patterns of neurotransmitters
and neurohormone secretion between sleep stages may be responsible for this function. Backhaus and
Junghanns200 randomly assigned 34 young healthy subjects to a nap or wake condition of about 45 minutes in the
early afternoon after learning procedural and declarative memory tasks. They noted that naps significantly
improved procedural but not declarative memory and therefore a short nap is favorable for consolidation of
procedural memory. Goder et al.201 tested the role of different aspects of sleep for memory performance
in 42 consecutive patients with nonrestorative sleep. They used the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Design test and
the paired-associative word list for declarative memory function and mirror tracking tasks for procedural learning
assessment. The results supported the contention that visual declarative memory performance is significantly
associated with total sleep time, sleep efficiency, duration of NREM sleep, and the number of NREM-REM sleep
cycles but not with specific measures of REM sleep or SWS. In contrast to all of these studies, Vertes and Siegel 202–
205 took the opposing position, contending that REM sleep is not involved in memory consolidation—or at least not
in humans—citing several lines of evidence. They cited the work of Smith and Rose206,207 that REM sleep is not
involved with memory consolidation. Schabus et al.208 agreed that declarative material learning is not affected by
sleep. In their study, subjects showed no difference in the percentage of word pairs correctly recalled before and
after 8 hours of sleep. The strongest evidence cited by Vertes and Siegel202 includes examples of individuals with
brain stem lesions with elimination of REM sleep 209 or those on antidepressant medications suppressing REM
sleep, who exhibit no apparent cognitive deficits. Vertes and Siegel202 concluded that REM sleep is not involved in
declarative memory and is not critical for cognitive processing in sleep. Whether NREM sleep is important for
declarative memories also remains somewhat contentious.

Synaptic and Neuronal Network

Integrity Theory
There is a new theory emerging that suggests the primary function of sleep is the maintenance of synaptic and
neuronal network integrity.129,185,210–212 According to this theory, sleep is important for the maintenance of
synapses that have been insufficiently stimulated during wakefulness. Intermittent stimulation of the neural
network is necessary to preserve CNS function. This theory further suggests that NREM and REM sleep serve the
same function of synaptic reorganization.210 This emerging concept of the “dynamic stabilization” (i.e., repetitive
activations of brain synapses and neural circuitry) theory of sleep suggests that REM sleep maintains motor
circuits, whereas NREM sleep maintains nonmotor activities.210–212 Gene expression studies213 using the DNA
microarray technique identified sleep- and wakefulness-related genes (brain transcripts) subserving different
functions (e.g., energy metabolism, synaptic excitation, long-term potentiation and response to cellular stress
during wakefulness; and protein synthesis, memory consolidation, and synaptic downscaling during sleep).

From SLEEP DISORDERS MEDICINE