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Learning to sleep

00:00 Sun 31st Dec 2000 | Body & Soul

By Merill Haseen

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SCIENTISTS at Harvard Medical School claim to have proven what your teachers always told you: staying up all night to study does you more harm than good.

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The researchers found that the human brain needs quality sleep immediately after studying to implant new skills in the memory. Sleep deprivation means that students are unlikely to remember anything, because of the effect tiredness has on their memory and ability to make good decisions.

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People who disrupt the sleep process, even for a single night, may find that they haven't mastered certain tasks.


Twenty-four Harvard University students were given a series of tests. On the first day of the study, the students learned the task.� Half the students slept that night, while the other half stayed up until the second night of the study. All of the students slept on the second and third nights. On the fourth day, the students tackled the test again.


Only the students who had slept every night of the study improved their performance. They identified the correct pattern of images on the computer screen more rapidly than they had on the first day. They didn't get any subsequent training, so the improvement took place the first night while they slept, said researcher Robert Stickgold.

Students who missed the first night's sleep failed to improve their performance, even though they had two full nights to catch-up on their sleep.

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But, how do we measure sleep deprivation How much sleep do school children need Contrary to popular belief, adolescents need as much sleep as young children.

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Research has found that both groups need about nine and a half hours sleep a night. The symptons of teenage sleep deprivation - poor concentration and high irritability - are often put down to hormones.

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Adults, meanwhile, need at least eight hours sleep a night. During that time the brain assimilates and stores the information learned during the day.

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Even if�staying up all night may keep some information in the short term memory, it is likely that even that will be forgotten relatively quickly and re-learned all over again.

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That means students who rely on working all night to swat up for exams may have to relearn the information all over again to do well on their finals.

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