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Studying without sleep fails to pass
Survey: Students decrease chances of long-term learning
By Lisa Black
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
January 2, 2007
CHICAGO – College freshman Edie Weiner arrived home for winter break on a Saturday night, fell into her childhood bed and didn't get up for 20 hours. By the time the 18-year-old stumbled out from hibernation at 5 p.m. the next day, her parents had grown a bit anxious.
Weiner, like many of her classmates, was recovering from a sleepless, caffeine-fueled week of cramming for finals – a sort of celebrated ritual that has long played out on college campuses.
But while some parents may be annoyed about their teenagers' unusual sleep patterns when they return home for break – the word “lazy” might be muttered on occasion – medical experts describe the students as sleep-deprived and say new research provides cause for concern.
A study in the Dec. 18 issue of the Nature Neuroscience journal examined how memories are processed in the brain during sleep. During the nondreaming portion of sleep, the brain replays the day's events, helping people reflect on recent happenings and learn from them, said Matthew Wilson, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
The bottom line: Information crammed into the brain during a sleepless night has less chance of sticking. When deprived of sleep, students might be able to regurgitate information they've memorized overnight, but they have decreased their ability to understand its meaning or to apply it to future experience.
“Sleep isn't just a passive event,” said Wilson, co-author of the study, which interpreted the memories of rats by inserting electrodes into their brains.
“The best way to take advantage of sleep is to have it interspersed between periods of wakefulness in a regular way,” he said.
Parents may feel better about cramming for exams because they see that when their exhausted students return home for break, they sleep excessively to catch up.
“They are trying to replenish themselves,” said Dr. Phyllis Zee, a neurology professor and director of Northwestern University's Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology. But she and Wilson said sleep gained days later isn't as beneficial as systematic sleep.
“You can't make up for the lack of past sleep by just loading up on it,” Wilson said. Adding to the problem, Zee said, is that many students don't return to a healthy sleep pattern after recuperating from exam week.
Since emerging from her sleepathon, Weiner often awakens at 9 a.m. for breakfast, then naps from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. before heading out the door to hang with friends until 2 a.m. or so.
“(My parents) don't think it's typical, but I do,” said Weiner, a freshman at Southern Illinois University.
Weiner concedes she spent too much time socializing at school and found herself sleeping through some classes. She isn't sure she will resume her equine studies classes next semester.
“She just went kind of crazy at school,” her mother, Gwen Weiner, said with a sigh.
