FREE ESSAY ON REM SLEEP

REM SLEEP

Are All-nighters Really Worth It?
This article basically talks about the importance of sleep, specifically REM sleep, to
transfer short-term memory to long-term memory. Researchers at Harvard University suggest
that getting good sleep is necessary to convert short-term memory into long term memory.
They have found that pulling all-nighters is probably not the best idea. They claim it
takes at least two nights of good sleep to compensate for the lack of sleep on that
night. In addition they have done test that indicate that there is a chemical that is
released during dreaming that is linked to memory consolidation. They also found sleep is
linked to alertness, which most of us know, and it also effects the individuals attention
span. To test their theories they did an experiment that was based on visual
discrimination. The subjects had to identify the orientation of three diagonal bars that
were flashed in a 1/16th of a second time period. Half of the subjects stayed up until
the second night, the other half were allowed to sleep. All of the subjects were allowed
to sleep on the second and third nights. The forth day they were tested to see which
group retained the most information. The group that slept the first night recognized the
correct orientation of the bars more rapidly than they had previously recognized them on
the first night of the experiment. The other subjects showed no improvement over the
initial day of testing. Based on the experiment regular sleep tends to increase the
transfer of short-term memory to long term memory. In addition, REM sleep does also tend
to have an effect on retaining memories and memory recall. However sleeping is just one
of the things that helps convert short-term memory to long-term memory. Repetition is
another way to get something to go into long-term memory as well as the amount of
attention you pay while you study the material. 
There have been studies that contradict these findings. The author of this article draws
form a noted sleep researchers book called "The Promise of Sleep." In the book it tells
of a man that was in a war and the part of his brain that allows one to have REM sleep
was wounded, therefore his ability to enter REM sleep was not possible. Remarkably the
man could still learn and perform tasks that any normal person could. That is just one
case but it still leaves room for experimentation in the short-term to long term
question. I think the main point of this article is to show that there is a lot less
value in pulling an all-nighter the night before the test than studying many days before
a test and getting ample sleep so that your brain can rest
Even though most of this article provided information that was fairly widely known, I did
learn that it is not a good idea to pull an all-nighter.
Bibliography
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