SEtalk: Sleep Is Not a Waste of Time

Raise your hand if you've ever pulled an all-nighter. Oh, I can see plenty of hands out there! Don't worry. I used to be the champion of all-nighters myself. But tonight, I want to convince you to stop. Sleep isn't a break from learning. It's part of learning. Let's go back to 1924, to a lab at Cornell University. Two researchers asked people to learn lists of nonsense syllables. Then some went to sleep, and others stayed awake. The sleepers remembered far more of the lists! But what is the brain actually doing at night? In the 1990s, scientists recorded brain cells in rats. Certain cells fired as the rats ran through a maze. Later, as the rats slept, the same cells fired together again! It was as if they were replaying the maze! Here's the simplest way I can put it. During the day, your brain collects information. At night, sleep is when your brain presses 'save'! So what happens if you skip the night? In 2007, a team at Harvard tested exactly that. One group slept normally. The other stayed awake all night. The next day, both groups tried to learn new pictures. For the sleepless group, making new memories was much harder. Their ability dropped by about forty percent! I learned this the hard way, at university. Before my biology final, I studied all night with coffee. In the morning, I read the first question — and my mind was completely blank. I'd studied for twelve hours, and remembered almost nothing. So here's my advice for your next big exam. Don't trade sleep for study the night before. Review the hardest material just before bed, and let your brain do the rest while you sleep. Protect seven to nine hours a night. That's not wasted time. That's when learning happens! Thank you.