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How does REM sleep drive your skill learning and improvement?
In today's fast-paced society, many people are looking for ways to improve their learning and work. As research deepens, scientists have discovered that sleep is not only a time for the brain to rest, but also has an important impact on whether our learning and memory can be solidified. In particular, the differences between REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and slow-wave sleep reveal the different roles they play in memory consolidation.
REM sleep is often associated with the consolidation of memories that cannot be stated (implicit memories), while slow-wave sleep promotes the consolidation of memories that can be stated (explicit memories).
Research shows that healthy sleep can significantly improve learning performance. Sleep helps the brain edit memories, find important patterns, extract overall rules, and integrate existing memories. This process is called the "synaptic scaling" hypothesis, which emphasizes the important role sleep plays in regulating our waking learning, making the brain's storage more efficient.
A complete sleep cycle is about 90 minutes, including about 20 to 30 minutes of REM sleep. Overall, sleep consists of multiple stages of NREM, when the body is still able to perform some movements, while REM sleep is a state of almost complete lack of muscle activity. However, this distinction is crucial for different types of memory solidification.
Procedural memory is implicit memory, and sleep is particularly critical when learning motor skills.
Research has demonstrated improvements in procedural memory in fingertip-clicking tasks. In this experiment, participants were divided into two groups, one group was retested while awake, and the other group was retested while sleeping. The final results showed that those participants who slept in between sessions showed significant gains in performance, confirming the importance of REM sleep in consolidating motor skills.
Not only that, explicit memory also benefits from sleep, but this mainly relies on NREM sleep. One experiment in which participants learned pairs of words showed that sleep not only prevented memory decline but also effectively consolidated these explicit memories. When new interference pairs are learned, sleep afterwards helps better retain previously learned content.
The role of sleep is not only to solidify memories, but also to reorganize and analyze memories subconsciously.
The process of pattern replay during sleep is like reviewing brain activity during learning. This reanalysis helps strengthen the connections between neurons and eliminate unimportant connections, thereby improving the brain's operating efficiency. Many experiments have found that taking a nap in the afternoon is also an effective way to improve learning ability.
In 2020, research on student learning and sleep pointed out that lack of sleep directly affects academic performance. With most American high schools starting early in the morning, many students choose to stay up late or are unable to fall asleep on time, causing their academic performance to decline.
Different learning models will also affect students' sleep quality, which is closely related to the rise of distance learning.
For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, students in some remote learning formats reported higher sleep quality. This has led some schools to rethink class times to give students more opportunities to get enough sleep. For example, a New Zealand school changed the class time to 10:30 to allow students to have more sleep time, thereby improving learning results.
After realizing the huge impact of sleep on learning, educational institutions began to pay attention to students' sleep quality. In the United States, about 73% of college students face sleep problems, which not only affects their ability to study, but also affects their overall quality of life. When there is insufficient sleep, the brain cannot effectively organize information.
At this time, we can’t help but think: In such an era that values efficiency, have we really given our bodies and minds enough rest time?
