Sleep to think

yawn

While staying up until sunrise is romantic and actually quite fun, it’s not the best way to nourish your intellect, says the New York Times. According to recent studies, apparently we do some great thinking, reflecting, logical categorizing and relearning while we’re in deep sleep.

Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking ? a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage.

The theory is controversial, and some scientists insist that it?s still far from clear whether the sleeping brain can do anything with memories that the waking brain doesn?t also do, in moments of quiet contemplation.

So, technically, we really should sleep on our arguments and problems, instead of staying up until the early hours of the morning trying to resolve them. Similarly, college students should not stay up for 11 nights straight, studying or otherwise.

Previous studies of nocturnal sleep have found the same thing. Memory of learned facts, whether they are names, places, numbers or Farsi verbs, seems to benefit in part from deep sleep. Healthy sleepers usually fall into deep sleep about 20 minutes or so after head meets pillow. They might spend an hour or more in those lolling depths early in the night, and typically less time later on. When cramming on facts, in short, it may be wiser to crash early at night and arise early, than to burn the candle until 2 a.m., the research suggests.

This confirms what I’ve known all along ? a good night’s sleep is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.