After watching the TED talk about the reasons why we sleep and the consequences of bad sleeping habits, I’m wondering if I’ll ever be good at the “art” of sleeping. There are so many reasons why sleep is important to individuals of all ages including the restoration of the body, energy conservation, and enhancement of brain function. I believe that the restoration of the processes in the body along with renewing your body for the next day is vital to sustain the optimum functioning of the individual. A good, undisturbed sleep each night is one of the best things we can do for our health, recovery and complete regeneration of the brain and central nervous system according to an article written by Tracy Kaye Holly for Fresh magazine. I believe that in order to get the best results in every aspect of life, an individual needs to be well-rested. For example, before an exam, it should not be very surprising that students who get a good night’s rest tend to score higher than those who pulled an all-nighter. If you allow your body to rest after a whole day’s worth of constant struggle, you’re giving your body a chance to be rejuvenated and ready to take on the next day. The supporting information was taken from a magazine article which stated the importance of rest and sleep on the human body. According to the article, because of sleep, the nervous system is nourished, our muscles are relaxed, and our minds are well-rested. Although there were no additional research to back up the claims the author made, and there were no credible sources for the information provided, most of the detail in the article seemed to correlate fairly well with the TED talk, and thus I find it reliable in a sense that it is not giving out false information to the general public. In a more scientific way, however, I would not recommend the article to back up any specific details about the topic of the importance of sleep.

Link: http://www.freshvancouver.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=193:rest-and-sleep-restore-the-power-of-your-body&catid=49:health&Itemid=108

In this TED Talk, circadian neuroscientist Russell Foster mentions and explains three popular theories about why we sleep. The theory that sounded most convincing to me was his third theory, which is about brain processing and memory consolidation. When Foster states, “What’s turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep… Sleeping at night enhances our creativity. And what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important.” I started to think about what we learned in our psychology textbook on sleep, and how neural connections and synaptic connections are linked.

Doing more research on this theory, I found a website where its main focus is about sleep- what it is, how it works and why we do it. It begins by talking about how sleep is related to memory and learning. It states, “Several studies have shown how sleep facilitates long-term memory processing, both the conversion of short-term memories into long-term ones, and also the reconsolidating of existing  long term-memories.”Going further, it explains how there is a connection between memory and sleep deprivation, because it has been shown to reduce short-term and long-term memory. It begins talking about REM sleep, and how it benefits procedural memory, motor learning, and visual learning. Just like Foster was describing neuronal and synaptic connections, this website goes into more detail and says,” neuronal and synaptic activity in the brain during sleep has been shown to be significantly greater in the same areas where learning took place during the day..” It then talks about connecting REM sleep with synaptic connection. In the end, this article explains how sleep facilitates creativity, flexible reasoning, and higher level “insights”. I find this article trustworthy, because this website is solely based on sleep so I think much of research has been done to do this kind of website. It goes into much detail, breaking down not only this theory but other theories on why we sleep. I also like how this part of the website connects entirely with Russell Foster’s presentation.

http://www.howsleepworks.com/why_memory.html

After watching the TED talk I can really see how Russel’s theory of sleep having multiple reasons or theories behind it can be valid, but if I had to choose one from the video i would agree with the Memory and learning processing theory. It seems to be common knowledge that sleep and learning correlate with each other. A fully rested student tends to do better than a student who stayed up much later the night before. The theory that sleep is used as a means of fortifying the knowledge and memories that took place prior to it would make a lot of sense to me. So I went to  HowSleepWorks.com and did some more research to make sure the theory had some more information backing it. According to the information I found there the theory seems solid with sleep being key to forming connections to information learned prior to the sleep. Although I also found that sleep also acts like it is laying a foundation helping to learn and process things in the next day as well.Both of these can be seen by looking at the brain activity during sleep. The brain tends to hit the parts of the brain that were stimulated during the day. Dreams also tend to incorporate things that have occurred recently, prior to going to bed. This could be one way of explaining how people can get nightmare’s after certain scary events occur. People who watch horror movies late at night or even have a traumatic experience that day may relive some of those memories when they fall asleep. There is even some evidence to show that REM sleep and dreams can work on strengthening connections with memories making them easier to access as well as removing memories the brain decides are not as useful or just unnecessary. I find HowSleepWorks.com to be a viable source due to it being an amalgamation of information stockpiled from multiple government websites as well as other books, websites, television, and videos.

The most convincing theory to me was that we sleep in order for our brain to consolidate  memories, problem solve and “clean itself up,” although I definitely agree with Russell Foster when he says that there are most likely many different reasons we sleep. I found an article online titled Sleep and Learning that begins by talking about the widely known fact that people who are well rested perform much better in a multitude of tasks than those who are sleep deprived. It then illustrates that sleep not only helps you while you’re learning something new, but also locks the information in afterwards by turning it into a long term memory. This transfer of short term memory to long term, the article explains, could even be the cause of the ever so mysterious sleep spindles that are present in the second stage of sleep. We then learn from the article that the first two stages of sleep are important for brain plasticity for learning new material which could explain why taking a nap during the day can assist you in remembering  what you have learned. Sleep also plays a hand in learning abstract concepts and deep sleep assists with episodic declarative memory consolidation which is more useful for school. Because older people spend less time in deep sleep, or really sleep at all, the article says that this is why it’s harder for older people to learn new things. REM sleep is important for the assimilation of new memories with older ones, the article mentions that REM updates our comprehension of the world with the information from our most recent memories. The article concludes by briefly mentioning sleep disorders in people with learning abilities and how they are treated. I think this article is a decent source, but may not be the greatest. It is on a .org website, but I could not find who the author is. So while I believe that it is okay to use for this post, I would prefer to use a more scholarly for something like a research paper.