How Does Sleep Does In-Fact Effect Memory

Sleep is essential for optimal human function. In fact, a lack of sleep can actually affect important cognitive functions, like memory. A 2007 study added to the already substantial evidence that even acute total sleep deprivation impairs attentiveness, working memory, and reaction time in various tasks (Alhola, Polo-Kantola). One such way to further this investigation of the effects of sleep deprivation on memory is through the Memory Interference Test, or MIT. MIT is a program designed by Gaston Pfluegl, Ph.D., and Enrique Lopez, Psy. D., at UCLA to test the memory of students. Along with a memory test, the MIT also anonymously collected the physical states, mental states, and demographics of each student test subject, providing a substantial database through which students can test hypotheses, such as the connection between sleep deprivation and memory. Since the MIT requires short-term memory recall, the hours of sleep a student had before taking the test could have a noticeable effect on his or her performance. An unprecedented study this year found that sleep deprivation may actually even induce false memories, which would certainly impact a student taking the MIT because the test requires the subject to recognize images that have been previously presented to them (Frenda, et al). The hypothesis is that students who slept 8 hours before the test will perform better on the MIT than students who only slept 4 hours. The null hypothesis is that students who had adequate

Most studies are about discovering the contributors of false memories. However, this study focuses on how sleep deprivation contributes to false memories even though many studies argue that sleep deprivation damages cognitive function. Their study went in detail by researching the effect encoding have during this process. They found that if a participant was sleep deprived during event encoding; he or she would increase the likelihood of falsifying memories. However, when the participant was sleep deprived after encoding had already occurred then there was no big impact on falsifying memories. These experiments are conducted on the effect of sleep deprivation contributing to false memories since false memories can have dreadful consequences.

In the article, “ Sleep Deprivation and False Memories,” by Steven J. Frenda. Lawrence Patihis, Elizabeth F. Lotus, Holly C. Lewis, and Kimberly M. Feen, researcher ’s, from the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine and Michigan State, did a study on certain factors that affect memories and the creation of false memories. Researchers want to find, within this experiment, how sleep deprivation and memory storage relate to each other. The researchers are looking at the relationship between self-reported sleep duration and false memories and the effect sleep deprivation is susceptibility to false memories. The researchers started off there report by telling what false memories are and where they stem from. False memories are when the encoding process is

Frenda, Patihis, Loftus, Lewis and Fenn’s (2014) article titled “Sleep Deprivation and False Memories sought out to explanation how sleep deprivation can have a role in an individual’s cognitive function. One-way researchers went about unraveling this particular question was to uncover the invisible knowledge relating the formation of false memories with sleep deprivation. Two experiments were executed diving into the many ways that sleep deprivation can affect a person’s thoughts and general decisions, using many examples.

Sleep deprivation is detrimental to the performance of cognitive tasks (e.g., slowed down reaction time, decreased working memory, and decreased learning capacity). An article by popular science magazine Science Daily interprets an article published within Psychological Science that sleep deprivation is possibly linked to the creation of false memories. The original article was testing whether sleep deprivation had any part in causing false memories in humans. Two experiments were done to test the theory of sleep deprivation and false memories. The hypothesis of the experiment was “sleep deprivation increased false memories in a misinformation task when participants were sleep deprived during event encoding, but did not have a significant effect

Sleep is one of the key essentials for cognitive performance, yet it is accounted that most people do not receive a sufficient amount. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2016 that on average, 50-70 million Americans do not receive the proper amount of sleep per night. This concept is more commonly referred to as sleep deprivation. By definition, sleep deprivation is simply not getting enough or the lack of sleep. As the number of hours that a person is awake increase, their cognitive and attentional deficits become more evident. Prospective memory is remembering to do something that you previously planned to do. This form of memory is often aided by cues in the environment and requires cognitive and attentional capacities. Sleep or the lack thereof can impact numerous processes such as memory, attention, and executive functioning. The main objective of this present study is to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on the attentional networks and cognitive functioning required for prospective memory. The results of this study will provide in depth insight on the importance of an adequate amount of sleep for the successful performance of various cognitive tasks and propose further research.

Memory can also be affected by lack of sleep. Also peoples inability to remember things can be affected.

This paper examines five different sources of information that addresses information pertaining to wakeful resting or sleeping and the effects it has on memory garnered by experiments performed on humans and animals. Wakeful resting is defined as an individual that has not fallen asleep but has engaged in a period of rest that cuts them off from the distractions of the outside world. Sleep is the bodies natural cycle of rest that suspends the consciousness and allows both the body and the mind to take a break from any stressful activities and recover. By either taking a short wakeful rest or going to sleep after learning new material, memory consolidation in both humans and animals will be improved, and it is not limited to humans that

The article Sleep deprivation and false memories reported two studies, but only study one will be summarized here. The study done here is to see if amount of sleep is associated to false memories. This study is a correlational study because it is looking for the association of natural occurring variables (i.e. the amount of sleep one gets). The independent variable of this study is the amount of sleep the participants had, either they were sleep deprived or not. The dependent variable is whether or not they had false memories. The participants were made up of one hundred ninety-three undergraduates from the University of California, Irvine, 76% of which were female and 24% were male. The participants were divided into two different groups based on their self-reported sleep duration only on the night prior to the study session. The participants who reported five or fewer hours of sleep were put in the restricted sleep group, those with more than five hours were put into the reference group. Neither group differed meaningfully on age, gender, race-ethnicity etc.

Sleep has an undoubtedly profound effect on cognitive function and memory consolidation in young children. Policy makers have the ability to influence sleeping patterns in children by means of scheduling of classes and funding activities — therefore research into sleeping patterns for optimal achievement is very important when considering the structure of early education. Extensive research exists showing the positive effects of napping on cognitive performance tasks but there is still somewhat of a gap in the quantitative information of adolescent napping via actimeter or electroencephalograph when analyzing the results of declarative memory recall as well as controlling for the effects of social interaction in lecture settings. Research on preschool children illustrated that sleep spindles in midday naps enhanced learning for memories acquired earlier that day (Kurdziel, Duclos & Spencer, 2013). A similar study conducted with adolescents showed that napping enhanced the duration of declarative memories which demonstrates the continued benefits of napping through development (Lemos, Weissheimer & Riberio 2014). A later study showed that nap schedules modulate children’s motor learning in finger tapping exercises and facilitate skill retention for younger children (Ren, Guo, Yan, Liu, & Jia, 2015). In another study, infants who were in a nap

Frenda and colleagues examined the relationship between sleep deprivation and the formation of false memories, due to prior research showing that there is a relationship between sleep deprivation and other cognitive functions, such as reaction time, working memory capacity, learning, and executive function. To support the methods they used, the researchers discussed types of false memory studies, which used suggestive questioning and misinformation procedures. They also mentioned that although there have been studies on sleep deprivation and false memory, the results have not proven to be very consistent, and they do not carry over into real life situations.

ii. Study made by researchers on the two groups of mice is actually convincing regarding the fact that sleep facilitates long term memory.

Learning and information consolidation not only depends on brain activation but also on sleep to convert the highly plastic, novel information into long-term storage. The research question under investigation is: What is the association between Sleep Quality and Pre-sleep Encoding on Learning and Encoding during Sleep and Successive Performance? This topic is important to study due to the fact that, at the very basic level, sleep is crucial for proper brain functioning; after an influx of highly new events become encoded in the hippocampus, mental performance on following tasks are reduced (Anderson, 2010). Being that sleep deprivation and postponed sleep is a prevalent topic for university student, as students are often low on high-quality sleep, this was an interesting topic to investigate and findings can be extended to benefiting real-life university students.

Getting an adequate amount of sleep each night is a major factor when considering your ability to have a functioning long term memory. If you’re not getting enough sleep your brain will have trouble consolidating the information that enters your head each day. The relation to the amount of sleep a person gets, and their ability to move information into their long term memory had not been studied much in adolescents until this study done by Katya Trudeau Potkin, who works at the Department of Human Biology at Brown University and William E. Bunney Jr who works at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of California Irvine. Declarative memory is a huge part in the development of adolescents both socially and

The results of their survey showed that long-sleepers (more than 9 hours per night) had a significantly higher GPA compared to short sleepers (less than 7 hours per night)” (Paul, M. Panton, C. & Marzigliano. N. 2008) Also neuroimaging studies have shown that regions of the brain involved in the implementation of a serial reaction time task are reactivated during REM sleep. (Parmeggiani, P.L. Velluti, Ricardo A 2005) Sleeping right after a task was taught meant that the subjects had a higher performance level on that task.