Skip to main content

Learning Challenge, Sleep Pt. 5

This week, I continue learning more about sleep and its benefits by reading the article entitled "Science of Slumber: How Sleep Affects Your Memory" by National Public Radio.

Right from the start, one thing I really like about this article is that it backs up what it claims with some level of empirical knowledge. The professor notes that as we get older, our memory decays and the level of our sleep does as well. This is seen in the brainwaves that they can monitor as we sleep. In general, I note how I would like to see empirical evidence to back up the ideas in the article, and this is a step in the right direction.

But the empirics don't stop there. They mention comparing two groups in a suited, one inn which they compare a group during the day, and 12 hours later, and the other group, they compare after a night of sleep. Comparing the results, it seems that the group that sleeps well will perform better.

The article also mentions how people can need different levels of sleep as well. But overall, the main idea is how a lack of sleep can affect our performance. As students, we generally want to sacrifice sleep in order to study for a big test coming up, but this article suggests that maybe this is not the most optimal choice we can make for ourselves. Instead of choosing studying over sleep, it might be better to choose sleeping over studying, as in the long term, our performance on the test the next day might be significantly better.

Overall, the topic of sleep is something that we know relatively little about, but we can always expand our knowledge. It's an interesting topic, and it's great to see more empirical evidence involved.


Sleep is an essential part of the memory process. Source: Wikipedia

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction: Getting to know Me

My name is Sean, and I am double majoring in chemical engineering and mathematics. I enjoy mathematics and computations, and the engineering program marries these two very well, while the mathematics program introduces a theoretical side. I hope to learn enough about mathematical modeling and refinery operations to become a financial forecaster for crude training. Favorite Foods: My favorite food of all time is the szechuan chicken with hot chile oil from a restaurant in my hometown called Szechuans. But other great foods include: gumbo, steak, and kettle chips. I had the chance to intern at ExxonMobil in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where I consumed a large amount of cajun food. I had gumbo 3-4 times per week and while there are many kinds of gumbo, the best is by far chicken and sausage. Free Time: In my free time, I enjoy playing soccer, running, and racquetball. Soccer is a sport I've played for the past 15-16 years, and I've played for many teams including intramural and c...

Growth Mindset: Reasons Behind Failure

This week, I continue my learnings on the growth mindset. I read the article entitled, " Behavioral research illuminates the very human heart of when, why, and how we fail ," by Cassie Werber. One thing that this article confirmed was that we often blame ourselves when we fall short of our goals. For instance, when someone doesn't go to the gym on February 1st, they try to blame themselves for their failure. But perhaps instead, we should just view it as an inconsistency that is surrounded on one side by 30 days of success, and has the potential to be surrounded by 30 more. I was able to learn that another approach to this is by applying Game Theory. Game Theory is a sort of economic theory that tells us how a multi-player interaction can be optimized. They give the example of a smoker as both players in a two player game and how he was able to overcome his vice. One thing I would like to know more about is how many people simply give up on an entire goal when they ha...