For my book report, I choose the book "Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker. The book generally talks about how important sleep is for us and how essential it is for our physical and mental health. Sleep contributes to so many aspects of our lives that we don't even know or realize. Without sleep or lowered sleep, it can significantly decrease one's health in many different ways. Walker stresses within this book that sleep is the most effective thing we can do for our brains and health each day to rest it.
Some eye-opening information I learned from this book is sleep actually strengthens your memories and ability to obtain new information. Your brain's ability to obtain new information could actually drop by 40% without sleep. I found this interesting as I used to stay up late in high school and would always have trouble in class the next day. I always thought it was my ADHD at fault, but I now learned it was probably due to my poor sleeping habits.
My favorite part was learning about REM sleep vs deep NREM sleep. I learned that Deep NREM Sleep is the sleep where you are not dreaming. Its benefits are that it strengthens your long-term memory, ability to retain new information, and can clear your brain waste. REM Sleep is when you are dreaming as you sleep. It is a lighter sleep that helps process your emotions, boosts your creativity, and increases your emotional memories. I thought this was insightful to learn about as I did not know there was a difference in what each kind of sleeping can do for your body.
This connects to the class lecture slides about Impulsivity as sleep deprivation could make you more impulsive. We as humans make poor decisions sometimes for a short-term reward mostly when we're tired, stress, or emotional. With less sleep, our prefrontal cortex becomes weak and makes it harder for us to fight impulsive decisions. Walker talks about how sleep is what fuels the brain and if we do not get the right amount, our brains are physically unable to make good decisions.
I've always heard about how important sleep is to us, as we have pretty much been taught that our entire lives, but I didn't know that there is a connection between sleep and impulsivity. It makes a lot of sense that when we are more tired, we tend to not think through decisions and just want an immediate reward. If we were more rested, then we may be able to realize that the quicker reward may not be the better one and will allow us to make better decisions.
ReplyDeleteI too found the studies on sleep and impulse control interesting. I am an advocate of sleeping over cramming when it comes to studying for a test the night before! I may stay up somewhat later than I would like but I will not choose studying over anything less than 6 hours of sleep. Oddly enough, despite all the negative consequences discussed about sleep deprivation, I sometimes become more creative when I am sleep deprived and have used this to my advantage. Of course it's not sustainable, but it is a nice resource to have at my disposal.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great overview of the book. I did not choose this book, so it was interesting to see the different facts you learned and how it triggered you to think about how a lack of sleep might have added to your trouble in school. As someone with ADHD as well, I think it would be interesting to start taking note on days I'm struggling with concentration to think about the kind of sleep that I had the night before. Thanks!
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