Free Essay: Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Memory?

Sleep is a vital constituent of the life of human beings since its people maintain a healthy life of engaging in daily routines. Sleep also allows certain main physiological functions such as thermoregulation to continue. Such activities include immune defense, tissue restoration, brain plasticity, and energy conservation. Sleep and brain are interconnected such that even a particular night of nap deficit can cause mood disruption, exhaustion, daytime weariness, and other forms of mental damage. In the modern day, sleep deprivation is a common problem for people since they are busy 24/7 looking for money and other things. This situation has a significant risk for people's health, overall wellbeing, and brain function. The reason why sleep loss causes adverse effects on brain function is not known. However, the lack of sleep affects memory consolidation. According to Chee & Chuah (2008), the neuronal links are refurbished with a few hours of snooze. Remodeling of the brain occurs when a person gets enough sleep. Nap deficiency affects the development of stable memory and affects the brain's ability to absorb and recall information.

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Sleep makes people feel better. It provides the body time to recharge and rest. Sleep may be essential for the brain to learn and remember. Sleep permits the body to relax while the brain continues to process the information acquired throughout the day to form memories. Sleep deprivation can be associated with various risks such as health issues, hypertension, and diabetes, and obesity, capability to acquire and remember facts can also be affected. According to Diekelmann, Born & Wagner, (2010), memories are of different kinds. They are episodic, procedural, or instructional. A memory is formed by various functions, which include attainment, consolidation, and recollection. The acquisition is the procedure of getting something novel. Consolidation is when the retention advances to be stable in the brain while recall is when a person can use the recollection at a future time. Attainment and memory happen when people are conscious while researchers believe that consolidation occurs when people are asleep irrespective of the type of memory. Sleep makes it hard for the mind to grip and remember fresh data. Sleep not only sharpens the brain but also it also touches physical reflexes, judgment and fine motor abilities. Further, studies indicate that people who are sleep depressed tend to ponder they are correct even if they are mistaken. People who have a worthy night snooze or get a nap tend to perform better compared to sleep deprived individuals when in the office, on a test, in an athletic field or any other area.

Studies indicate that five hours of nap deficiency results in a damage of link in the middle of neurons in the hippocampus, which is an area in the mind that is linked with erudition and remembrance. Sleep plays a critical part in retention. Taking dozes is considered necessary in forming memories; however; it is not known how sleep deficiency damages hippocampal task as well as memory. It is argued that the structures that enable neutrons to pass indications to each other can upset recollection. Sleep deprivation is known to reduce massively the extent and spine solidity of the dendrites fitting to the neurons in the CA1 area of the hippocampus (Williams, Gieseking, & Lubin, 1966).

According to a recent research done by the University of California, Berkeley indicated that the poor quality of sleep among older adults is what causes memory loss as well as brain decline. According to the study, sleep results in vital brain waves that are generated and play a great role in storing memories. The brain waves are responsible for transferring memories from the hippocampus, which is a portion of the mind to the prefrontal cortex that is accountable for long term memory storage. Sleep deprivation in adults causes memories to remain in the hippocampus and north to be transferred to the prefrontal cortex, thereby resulting in forgetfulness and default recalling the names of people. There is a dysfunctional pathway that assists in explaining the link between brain worsening, sleep disturbance, and memory damage as people become old. When people are young, they get enough sleep that allows the brain to hoard and preserve firsthand material and data. However, as people get older, the quality of sleep is reduced, which leads to the failure of memories to be set aside by the brain throughout the night-time.

A sleep that is characterized by non-rapid eye movement, the mind yields surfs from the central frontal lobe as this part of the brain worsens, which is a common occurrence among the elderly. This situation determines whether a person has a deep sleep or not, which affects memory formation. This evidence is crucial for the treatment of memory loss issues among the elderly in the future (Fischer, Hallschmid, Elsner & Born, 2002). Past studies have been able to effectively increase deep sleep in adults using electrical stimulation, which resulted in better sleep and improvement in overnight memory. Researchers are performing studies that would determine ways that could increase sleep among the elderly, which would allow appropriate storing of memories and diminish general forgetfulness. There is extensive evidence that supports that the elderly have poor memory due to the low quality of sleep compared to their young counterparts. The worsening of the frontal lobe is associated with impaired wave activity.

Memory the superiority and the amount of sleep is essential to a individual's memory as it affects the capacity to recollect things. Sleep is a time when the brain combines remembrances. Sleep helps prune and entrench memories. There is a consensus among researchers that rest is necessary for consolidating memories. However, sleep does not affect all types of memories. Studies indicate that learning new skills and motor procedures requires sleep. Declarative memory also requires sleep for lasting preservation. Sleep is also essential for more straightforward conditioning. There are certain fragments of the mind, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and neocortex that are usually active when a person is asleep. Neuroscientists think that sleep affects the quality and quantity of memory representations. Memories are cemented and created in light sleep, deep sleep, as well as during REM sleep. The brain selects and makes them long-term during sleep. The hippocampus and the neocortex use different means to accumulate recollections. The short term memory is recorded by the hippocampus which is afterward redistributed to the neocortex here they become enduring memories. This method of memory consolidation during sleep explains why people with irregular sleep patterns such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, and fibromyalgia patients have difficulties forming memories (Tuck Sleep, 2017).

Sleep deprivation is supported by historical evidence that it affects temporal memory. Harrison & Horne (2000) conducted a study which was designed to measure the variables systematically to gather evidence. The study examined the consequences of 36-hour snooze deficiency on a neuropsychological examination of impermanent retention. The exam was petite, fascinating, and new. Caffeine was employed to help in reducing sleep. Caffeine had the effect of reducing personal drowsiness in doze poor and caffeine. The results of the investigation indicated that identification was not affected by sleep deprivation. Further, there was no notable enhancement in recency with coffee in the control participants.

According to a research by Fischer, Hallschmid, Elsner, and Born (2002) are that practicing motor ability activates a procedure of recall consolidation that endures for periods after the activity has terminated and later manifests as an enhanced ability at future testing. The creation of motor ability recollections fundamentally benefits from sleep. Regardless of whether sleep occurred during the daytime or nightfall, nap after rehearsal increase promptness of classification performance on ordinary by 33.5 percent and diminished error frequency by 30.1 percent likened with equal breaks of sleeplessness. The evidence indicated that snooze has an significant part to play in storing and optimizing motor skills (Harrison & Horne, 2000).

Numerous investigations have revealed that sleep deficit damages reminiscence in humans as well as rodents. The study that aimed at ascertaining the consequences of sleep scarcity on spatial knowledge and memory discovered that total sleep deprivation impaired the retrieval, but it did not affect a single day spatial recollection in mouse lemurs. Sleep is therefore tangled in memory recovery of a spatial chore in a primate (Rahman at al., 2013).

Practical imaging investigations of nap scarcity have described its impacts on various cognitive areas where the working memory has been studied for long. However, people are affected differently by sleep deprivation and can handle tasks differently depending on their vulnerability. There is extensive evidence that indicates that sleep is necessary for optimum mental purpose and learning (Chee & Chuah, 2008).

In conclusion, sleep deficiency has a significant impact on consolidation memory. It also affects other types of memories. Most researchers agree with this evidence, and it is, therefore, clear that sleep is necessary for maintaining memory in the long run. Older adults and those who have Alzheimer's and other disease have memory issues due to the low quality of sleep compared to young people who have significant memories due to deep sleep.

References

Chee, M. W., & Chuah, L. Y. (2008). Functional neuroimaging insights into how sleep and sleep deprivation affect memory and cognition. Current Opinion in neurology, 21(4), 417-423. 10.1097/WCO.0b013e3283052cf7

Diekelmann, S., Born, J., & Wagner, U. (2010). Sleep enhances false memories depending on general memory performance. Behavioral brain research, 208(2), 425-429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2009.12.021

Fischer, S., Hallschmid, M., Elsner, A. L., & Born, J. (2002). Sleep forms memory for finger skills. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(18), 11987-11991. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.182178199

Harrison, Y., & Horne, J. A. (2000). Sleep loss and temporal memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Section A, 53(1), 271-279. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/1076-898X.6.3.236

Rahman, A., Languille, S., Lamberty, Y., Babiloni, C., Perret, M., Bordet, R., ... & Richardson, J. (2013). Sleep deprivation impairs spatial retrieval but not spatial learning in the non-human primate grey mouse lemur. PloS one, 8(5), e64493. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064493

Tuck Sleep. (2017). How Does Sleep Affect Your Short and Long Term Memory. Retrieved 20 June 2019, from https://www.tuck.com/memory-and-sleep/

Williams, H. L., Gieseking, C. F., & Lubin, A. (1966). Some effects of sleep loss on memory. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 23(3_suppl), 1287-1293. https://doi.org/10.2466%2Fpms.1966.23.3f.1287