A Penn professor found that just one night of sleep loss can negatively affect the memory

At Penn, many students fail to budget time for one of the most important things in life — sleep.

A recently published study, conducted by researchers at the University of Groningen and the University of Pennsylvania, demonstrated a harmful connection between just one night of sleep deprivation and long-term memory.

What experiment did the researchers perform?

“Our main question was: What happens in the hippocampus?” author and assistant professor at the University of Groningen Robbert Havekes said. “Why is it so vulnerable to sleep loss?”

Researchers deprived mice of five hours of sleep a night and observed the ways in which this loss of sleep affected the physiological state of the hippocampus, a section of the brain that is vital to forming memories. They specifically focused on how sleep deprivation affects the connection between synapses in the hippocampus.

What did this experiment reveal?

Researchers found that loss of sleep caused loss of connectivity between synapses in the hippocampus. While just one night of sleep loss negatively affected memory, the synapses could be repaired through ‘recovery sleep’ after the sleep loss.

“What’s amazing is that the brain quite literally becomes unwired during wakefulness and then reconnected during sleep,” said Penn biology professor Ted Abel, the other main author of the study. “The neurons lost their synapses with extended wakefulness and with sleep, those synapses were reformed, so it’s a physical difference in our brain when we’re awake.”

What does this mean for sleep-deprived students?

“Most students, you spend your time cramming for an exam, but that isn’t really learning,” coauthor Dr. Jen Tudor said. “Get a really good night’s sleep after putting in the time to study.”

If you must sacrifice sleep for a project or an exam, don’t forget that recovery sleep can be key.

“You learn better if you actually take a nap,” Havekes said.

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