Behind the Ivy - Summer 2018

SUMMER ISSUE |  BEHIND THE IVY

Sleep is the best medicine! Photo Noelle Lim

S T U D Y I N G V S . S L E E P I N G : T H E U LT I M AT E S H OWD OWN EMMA MARGI E It’s exam season. Again. So, it’s not the best strategy.

20

happens during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep. Not only does the short-term memory get stored in this stage, but your brain also gets rid of useless information, like the kind of granola you put in your yogurt this morning. Dumping out these random details makes room in the brain for new learning. However, less sleep means less REM sleep, which could lead to the brain not having enough time to get rid of all that useless information. If you’ve ever felt like it was impossible to learn after only sleeping for a couple of hours, this is probably why. Since REM sleep is so important, a failure to sleep one night could create a domino effect. For example, you stay up late

what do you do? You might have a special routine that gets you into the groove, or maybe you do best when you wing it. For those of you who need to feel prepared, winging it is probably your worst nightmare and would cause even more stress. So instead, you huddle up with your binders and textbooks, writing out study notes and flashcards. Before you know it, it’s 10:00 p.m. and you just finished writing up those notes. You still have to practice using the flash cards because this exam is tomorrow, so you can’t go to bed yet. If you’re anything like me, this scenario might sound familiar. However, over the past couple of years, I’ve learned that

It might seem like a good idea to stay up for a few more hours so that you can memorize a bit more information, but unless you actually sleep, all that work will be for nothing. Scientists have found that brain connections related to learning form during sleep. This is when all those random facts and definitions you were trying to memorize move from short-term memory and become stored information that can be recalled later. Just by getting a few more hours of sleep, you could be able to better recall the answers to your next exam.

This memory consolidation