Sleeping Beauty

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Trying to learn a new skill? Striving for a promotion? Studying for a test? Start by getting a good night’s sleep! Sleep is not only physically restorative, but also crucial to learning and memory. The average adult needs seven-and-a-half to nine hours of sleep per night for optimum functioning, but in our busy, 24/7 world, most people are walking around sleep-deprived.

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Generally, we need one hour of sleep for every two hours we are awake.  By not getting enough rest, we rack up a cumulative sleep debt.  The longer you deprive yourself of sleep, the more of it you will need to feel rested. Even just a little sleep loss can severely compromise your learning ability, memory consolidation, creativity and problem solving skills. In fact, there is a 19 percent memory deficit in most sleep-deprived individuals.  This means that they are only operating at 80 percent of their full potential!

QUIZ: Are You Getting Enough Sleep?

Sleep is when the brain’s two memory systems—the hippocampus and the neocortex— “talk” with one another to exchange information. In the first two hours of sleep each night, any experiences from the day that will become memories are laid down in the hippocampus. In the next four hours, memories that are going to be retrained are moved to the neocortex. The neocortex is where experiences and memories gain physical permanence. Getting enough sleep for this transfer to occur is crucial to learning and memory!

From passing thought to permanent memory

Sleep is the best time for the transfer of material between the hippocampus and neocortex because the hippocampus is not “distracted” during sleep like it is while awake. Sleep is also the best time for the neocortex to link new material to related memories.

If you cut your personal sleep need short, you will find it more difficult to recall information or memories. This occurs because the final two hours (of an eight-hour sleep) are when REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and REM replay take place. During those crucial hours of sleep, your brain replays new material over and over again for maximum retention. So, even when you are sleeping, your brain is helping you learn!

That’s not all your brain is doing at night. Sleep is also important for memory consolidation, which is when your brain filters out any unimportant new information and cross-references the remaining essential information with what’s already on file in your brain. Making connections to what you already know is necessary for recalling the information later and adds to your critical and creative problem-solving abilities. This period is also when your brain processes information and replaces any material that you may have temporarily forgotten.

MORE: Sleep Deprivation and Daily Living, from James Maas, Ph.D.

Your brain knows when you need more consolidation time. Research shows that the night after a day of learning, the amount of time you spend in REM sleep naturally increases. Those final two hours make a huge difference in how much material you thoroughly learn. Six hours of sleep may be enough to retain some information, but it takes at least eight complete hours to fully incorporate learned material.