Sleeping and memory, my own experience

[bigsticker]

Hi there! As most of us know, sleep is the most important thing for us to be able to be functional in our daily lives. But it is also important for our memory to function correctly.. and our ability to learn. With a little research i have found this information about our memory and sleep from my own experience. When i was studying for my exams and tests, i used to get up in the night at 2, learn for an hour or 2 and go back to bed. Most of the times when i did that, the subject that i studied those hours were gone in the morning. Completely gone... I never quiet understood how that was possible. I blamed myself for not being focused even tough i drank coffee to keep myself concentrated , which i eventually was. So long story short. I was learning in the middle of the night, and really concentrated studying. But yet i almost forgot everything. Now in those hours that i woke up , i skipped my REM sleep.. every time. REM sleep is crucial for your learning ( long story short ) That year my studies weren't so amazing. I am not saying that this all is due the fact that i have skipped my REM sleep. But i am sure this has a part in it. Now the summer started and i was really getting along with my Dream Journal. This increased my memory capacity enormous! I mean it really helped me with my daily remembering things, small things, numbers people tell you, groceries, etc... So that next school year i was researching sleep and the stages of sleep and found out that sleep was crucial for our learning ability. That got me on a whole other level of studying. i got up early, studied 1-2 hours then i had a break for 5-10 minutes. i did this the entire day, with having lunch and diner of course! Then instead of studying until its 00.00 o'clock, i stopped at 20.00 ( i wasn't finished but i started one day early ) ate, watched some tv and went to bed at 21.30. This was a strict schedule i followed for 2-3 weeks. I was fit every morning and focused. i had my rest and even wrote in my Dream Journal when i recalled. Now the results were way better then last. I mean like 15% higher scores and even having a first of the year in history. Yet, these higher scores are not just because i slept good. I learned probably harder and was more scared of failing then other exams, but IN MY OPINION i think this helped me a lot. I know this is not scientifically proven, this is just an experience i am sharing with you. Thank you for reading, (btw: i graduated couple years ago..) cheers, Big

[dutchraptor]

Well done. You confirmed to yourself what all scientific evidence points at too. I actually noticed at a young age when I found that when playing piano, I could only learn the song I played last before sleep and then the next day. Songs I tried learning first and then moving on would just disappear from my head. A cool study was done showing that animals without REM sleep have a significantly harder time learning things than those that do.

[Meskhetyw]

Thanks for sharing. I also discovered such things when I was younger. At one point I skipped 6 months worth of school because I desired my sleep so greatly. In that time period I was able to experiment and I learned that I could spend five hours with my face in a book, and then 5 hours practicing martial arts or other physical activity, provided that each hour of physical activity consisted of a distinctly different skill. The important thing was that the book learning came first. When the mind became tired, the body was ready to move, and not the other way around. I also learned that the more relaxed I was and the more I enjoyed what I was doing, the faster I learned it and the better I retained it. Using this method I found that I was able to learn exponentially faster than I ever could have in the public school system. Of course, the consequences for not doing what I was told were soon made very apparent, and still are, but I didn't really care in the end, considering the enormous benefits. Of course, I got plenty of sleep; 10 - 12 hours per day, and the days became longer than 24 hours as well. To this day I would rather die than go around feeling sleep deprived; it literally makes life hell when you cannot grow.