Sleep is important to everyone, especially for us university students. Sometimes we can take sleep for granted, partially because of staying up late to do homework and study for exams. Some people function normally with only a couple hours of sleep while others who get the same amount of sleep are zombies. So just how exactly does sleep affect us?
Sleeping In Bed
From: Creative Commons
On June 22, 2018, a research article was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry by Dr. Ciro della Monica, Dr. Sigurd Johnsen, Dr. Giuseppe Atzori, Dr. John Groeger, and Dr. Derk-Jan Dijk. They studied how different aspects of sleep, specifically Rapid Eye Movement sleep and Slow Wave sleep, affect cognition, mood, and sleep quality in 206 healthy men and women, ages 20-84 years old.
Rapid Eye Movement sleep is a phase in the sleep cycle where a person can experience body and brain changes such as rapid movement of the eyes, fast breathing, increased heart rate, and facial or limb twitching. Slow Wave Sleep is a deep sleep state with low brain or body activity.
The researchers found that cognition and mood increased with more SWS and reduced with less REM sleep. During cognitive testing, accuracy reduced in individuals with less REM sleep and response times increased in individuals with SWS. Self-reported sleep quality positively associated with the duration of REM sleep. However, SWS was not significantly associated with self-reported sleep quality.
Kendall’s tau test measured the association between the two types of sleep and the waking activities. This test is a correlation test used in statistics to determine the correlation between two variables.
Figure 1. Correlation of REM sleep to waking activities.
The above graph shows that more REM sleep correlates to an improvement of the accuracy and mood.
Figure 2. Correlation of SW sleep to waking activities.
The above graph shows that more SW sleep correlates to an improvement in mood and visual-perceptual sensitivity (alertness).
Sleep positively affects our every days lives. Fortunately, this gives us a reason to sleep early instead of studying all night long for an exam the next day.
It is important to get enough sleep to have fast responses, increased accuracy, better moods throughout the day, and a refreshed feeling on waking up. With better sleep, us university students won’t be walking zombies on campus.
Gale Ladua
