Gunn 1 Brantley Gunn Final Report Psych 110 Effects from Sleep Deprivation It is three oclock on a Tuesday morning,

and I can no longer hold my eyes open. I fall asleep, and I am woken up by the noise of my alarm crashing into my ears just four and a half hours later. I force myself to roll out of bed and commence my day. After I finish all of my classes and personal duties, I proceed to study for my Psych 110 test that is on the next day. While studying, I have trouble retaining the vocabulary and focusing on the material. That Tuesday night, I try to get a decent amount of sleep about eight hours so my body and mind may function well for the test. I slept eight hours, but, after taking the test, I did not do as well as I hoped: I had trouble remembering a lot of the material even though I studied all of it the day before. I know I study as much as I generally do for any other test, and I made sure I had enough sleep the night before. So, I was frustrated with why I did not do as well as I was hoping. Sleep deprivation may still be the issue. I might not have received enough of sleep the day before I studied, but typically I enjoy sleeping very much. During holidays, when I often do not have many responsibilities or duties, I can sleep for more than twelve hours in one night. Because I enjoy sleeping, I have grown to become fascinated with it. I have listened to many podcasts and watched videos trying to explain the science and importance of sleep just for amusement. I even watched the episode 60 Minutes did about sleep the same one we watched in the Psych 110 class the week it was released. I also once took the

Gunn 2 initiative to monitor my sleeping habits and did a self-analysis of how well I functioned during the day based on how many hours of sleep I had the night before. Even though I like to sleep for an extended amount of time, I feel like I am normally too busy to worry about it. In fact, it seems like most people in the United States always need to be somewhere or have something they need to do; however, as humans, it is our natural, bodily function to stop whatever it is that we are doing and go to sleep within every twenty-four hours, but it seems like we are doing less and less of this natural function as time goes on. This appears especially true in college students. Many of my friends during high school got up to eight or nine hours of sleep ever night, but in college, many of them are now only getting five to six hours. Adolescents should receive nine and a quarter hours of sleep every night (Spinks, 2002). So, some people are not getting the amount of sleep they should. I have been aware that there are negative effects on the body physically and cognitively due to the lack of necessary amount of sleep, but I have not only been interested in the effects that occur resulting in sleep deprivation but also what role the effects can play in human performance. Knowing this could answer some of my questions about sleep, and it could also help me better approach my sleep schedule for my academic career. The two journal articles I chose were Effects of pre- or post-training paradoxical sleep deprivation on two animal models of learning and memory in mice (i.e. Mouse Experiment) and Effects of a 25-h sleep deprivation on daytime sleep in the middleaged (i.e. Daytime Experiment).

Gunn 3 When asleep, many animals go through several stages of sleepiness. Each stage occurs at different moments during sleep, and one stage is known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM). REM sleep is known to be more involved with learning and memory processing compared to the other stages (Silva, et al., 2004). The goal of the Mouse Experiment is to measure the effects that occurred from REM-sleep deprived mice during pre-training and post-training. In the experiment, pre-training is when the researchers deprived the mice of REM sleep before training, and post-training is when they deprived the mice after training but before testing (Silva, et al., 2004). There were two groups of mice: the control group with sufficient amount of sleep and the REM-sleep deprived group which were induced with 72 hours of REM-sleep deprivation. In order to keep a group of the mice REM-sleep deprived, the researchers kept the mice in water tanks that had twelve platforms the mice could stand on and move from one platform to another. The mice would fall asleep on these platforms, and when they would reach the REM stage of sleep, it caused muscle atonia (when muscle neurons do not activate causing the body to be inactive). This made mice fall off the platform and into the water; thus, waking them up (Silva, et al., 2004). The researchers used two condition models passive avoidance task and discriminative avoidance task to evaluate the effects of learning and memory caused by REM-sleep deprivation in mice. The passive avoidance task uses an apparatus made of two closed boxes connected with a door. One box is illuminated, and the other connected box is dark. In the training session, when the mouse is initially placed into the illuminated box, the door connecting the two boxes is open. When the mouse enters into the dark box, it is given

Gunn 4 a shock to the foot for two seconds. In the test session, the mouse is placed into the apparatus again, but a shock is not given to the mouse this time if it enters the dark box. The time it takes for the mouse to go from the illuminated room to the dark room is recorded and compared among the control and the REM-sleep deprived group of mice during each session. The amount of time it takes for a mouse to go from the illuminated room to the dark room is a measure of memory, so the more time the mouse took to enter the dark room indicated the better the mouse remembered for the training session (Silva, et al., 2004). In the discriminative avoidance task, a mouse was in an elevated plus-maze with two enclosed arms and two open arms. If the mouse entered a certain enclosed arm (the aversive arm), at the point of entry, a 100-W lamp was lit and an 80 dB noise was made. This was the training session. In the test session, everything was the same except no lights were turned on nor any noise was made in any of the arms. This process measured memory, retention, and anxiety. Memory was assessed by how long a mouse would spend in the aversive arm compared to the non-aversive arms. If there was a significant difference in time compared in the two different sessions, then this reflected retention. Anxiety was simply measured by the percent of time a mouse spent in the open arms (Silva, et al., 2004). When the results of the two groups of mice were compared to one another, the researchers found a number of effects and results. The REM-sleep deprived group had an increase in anxiety, a decrease in retention, and a decrease in motor activity among other effects; however, the results were more significant in the pre-training compared to the post-training. According to this experiment, in order for mice to retain more

Gunn 5 information in the long-term of a learned process, it is pivotal to have an efficient amount of sleep before the learning process compared to having an efficient amount of sleep after the learning process (Silva, et al., 2004). In the second journal article listed, the researchers measured the effects of daytime sleep after 25 hours of sleep deprivation between young adults (20-39 years old) and mid-age adults (40-60 years old). The goal of this experiment was to comprehend why complaints affiliated with shift work and jet lag increased in middleaged people (Gaudreau, et al., 2001). The participants had to keep a journal of their recorded sleep time fourteen days at their own home, and, after these fourteen days, the participants had to sleep in the researchers lab three consecutive nights before they were sleep deprived. After the participants were sleep deprived from 9am until twentyfive hours later, they were allowed to sleep from 11am to 5pm, which is known as sleep recovery. (Gaudreau, et al., 2001). After the experiment was completed, the researchers found that both groups average slow wave sleep was significantly greater during recovery then during normal sleep cycle which results in a reduction of REM sleep; however, the marginal change in the amount of slow wave sleep from baseline to recovery was lower in the mid-age adult group compared to the young adult group. Slow wave sleep is stage three and four nonREM sleep (Rechtschaffen, & Kales, 1968).They also found, when awake during the twenty-five hour period, the increase in sleep pressure was not as significant in the midage adult group compared to the young adult group. This means there was not a reduction in the amount of slow wave sleep, which alludes to a reduction in homeostatic recuperative drive (Gaudreau, et al., 2001). Humans have a homeostatic process and

Gunn 6 circadian rhythms. Homeostatic pressure builds up and indicates to the person the body needs to go to sleep. The homeostatic process is not regulated by a persons internal clock, however, circadian rhythm is. The circadian rhythm indicates when it is time for the body to be awake and when it is about time to go to sleep (Wyatt, et al., 1999). Overall, these results suggest that it takes longer for middle-aged adults to recover from sleep deprivation compared to young adults (Gaudreau, et al., 2001). The Mouse Experiment explained what effects occurred in sleep deprivation through the use of the conditioning models and which effects were more significant through the use of pre- and post-training. The Daytime Experiment gave insight to the variations of measurements of effects and variations of sleep patterns in different age groups. Because the journal articles have these characteristics, they can answer the questions I have about sleep deprivation and it is why I choose them. Even though the two journal articles have different goals, they do have some similarities. They both deal with the topic of sleep deprivation and measure the effects that occur from it; however, their differences are more profound. They differ in the deprivation of sleep stages, type of participants, types of effects, and measurement tools. In the Mouse Experiment, mice were used as participants, deprived them of the REM stage of sleep, measured the cognitive effects, and measured with conditioning models. In the Daytime Experiment, humans were used as participants, deprived them of all sleep, measured the physical effects, and measured with an electroencephalography. With these differences, however, there were not any noticeable contradictions between them.

Gunn 7 When reading the two journal articles, the effect that astounded me the most was the need to get an efficient amount of sleep before learning. When I was in high school, my mother always urged me to get a good nights rest the day before a test because she explained that the more sleep I have, the more time my brain has to review everything I did the previous days which includes the material I studied. While this might have some truth to it, neither she nor I realized it is more important to get a good nights rest before studying for a test in order to more easily store long-term memories, compared to having a good nights sleep after. I believe more and more Americans are not receiving the amount of sleep they should as time goes on, and I believe this is especially relevant to the college student population. I have many friends in college who go to sleep a few hours past midnight and wake up around 8-9am, and there have also been many students who spend allnighters studying for a test the next day. These cases cause sleep deprivation and ruins their homeostatic process. In order to reduce bad sleeping habits such as these, I propose that a website should be created specifically to raise awareness and advocate against bad sleeping habits in college students. The website will explain the resulting effects from sleep deprivation and how they negatively influence academics; it will state the key issues that cause bad sleeping habits in college students; and it will give tips and solutions on how to solve the problem. The website will cover effects such as anxiety, retention deficits, and motor activity among other effects that are caused by inefficient amount of sleep. For all-

Gunn 8 nighters, it affects the homeostatic process. Even though the Daytime Experiment mainly focused on mid-age adults, it also stated negative effects that occurred in young adults when they also negatively influenced their homeostatic process. When it was time for the participants to go to sleep after staying up twenty-five hours, their homeostatic process was creating a lot of pressure, but, at the same time, their circadian rhythm was indicating that the body that is should be awake at the same time. So, there was a clash between biological functions; as a results, when the participants were in daytime sleep recovery, their duration of wakefulness was significantly higher compared to when they slept at night. Because of this, participants spent less time in 1, 2, and REM stages of sleep (Gaudreau, et al., 2001). From what is said in the Mouse Experiment, the same effects occur. This is the same exact process when students pull an all-nighter to study for an exam, so the same effects occur as well. Reasons why college students may receive less sleep than the majority of the population can be due to the increase in stress, socializing, partying, and the increase of freedom of choice. There also may appear to be image on college campuses that sleeping is for wimps which can decrease the incentive to sleep ("Students and sleep,"). These reasons will be included on the website, so it may raise awareness to the students and they may act accordingly. The point of the website is to provide solutions on how to gain more sleep and keep an adequate sleeping cycle. Some solutions may be making a schedule to go to sleep and sticking to it. This will help balance and keep your homeostatic process and circadian rhythms consistent. Take a nap if you absolutely must, but avoid it if you can because it may influence you to stay up later in the night. If you have trouble sleeping,

Gunn 9 try sleeping with white noises or try to avoid early morning classes. Most importantly, avoid all-nighters. If you absolutely must study all night, than at least make sure you get a decent nights sleep the night before because, according to the Mouse Experiment, it is more important to get a good nights sleep before learning for long-term memory compared to the night after ("Students and sleep,"). I have witnessed multiple people saying they researched the subject of sleep after they pulled an all-nighter so they may know the side-effects they might be experiencing from it, so it seems like students are interested in knowing more about sleep; therefore, if the website I propose can successfully be the first or second or even the third result to appear when sleep is searched in online search engines, then it will result in a larger inflow of traffic. Search results and gaining the appropriate funding to run the website will be the most difficult challenges. If this is successful, this will raise awareness of the importance of sleep to many college students which may result in more productivity, a higher national GPA average in college students, and better health among an individuals short and long term life. Even though I already considered sleeping more important than the average student at Centre College, I am more concerned with how much sleep I receive every night after reading the two journal articles. For this semester, I have 8am classes every single school day, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have 3pm classes. So, my strenuous schedule can wear me out sometimes, and I try to keep to a good sleeping schedule. For next year, however, I am registered for much later classes, so it will be easier to keep to my sleeping schedule and have my homeostatic process and circadian rhythms in sync. If worst came to worst, and I have to stay up later than

Gunn 10 normal, I will know I can deplete the effects by making sure I get a good nights sleep the day before. I will still enjoy sleeping, and I might even enjoy it more since I am more aware of its importance. I will also continue to be fascinated by it. In fact, I now have even more questions about sleep after reading the journal articles. For example, how does sleep deprivation affect the body in the long-term? Is there a correlation between a persons success rate in mid-age adulthood and his or hers sleeping habits in young adulthood? Will the human race evolve to where they can fully function with less sleep? After all of this, the most surprising thing I learned is the importance of sleep before learning, and this is the answer to why I did not do well on my Psych 110 test in my story. Sleeping is more important than it is perceived, and this is the main thing I have learned.

Gunn 11 References Silva, R., Chehin, A., Kameda, S., Takatsu-Coleman, A., Abilio, V., & Tufik, S. (2004). Effects of pre- or post-training paradoxical sleep deprivation on two animal models of learning and memory in mice. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 82(2), 90-98. Gaudreau, H., Morettini, J., Lavoie, H., & Carrier, J. (2001). Effects of a 25-h sleep deprivation on daytime sleep in the middle-aged. Neurobiology of Aging, 22(3), 461-468. Wyatt, J.K., Cecco, A., Czeisler, C.A., & Dijk, D.J. (1999). Circadian temperature and melatonin rhythms, sleep, and neurobehavioral function in humans living on a 20h day. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol, 277(4), R1152-R1163. Rechtschaffen, A., & Kales, A. (1968). A manual of standardized terminology, techniques and scoring system for sleep stages of human subjects. US Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare. Spinks, S. (2002). Adolescents and Sleep. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org Students and Sleep Deprivation. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.healthtree.com/