All-nighters may prove beneficial

By Hilaire Fong
Daily Bruin Contributor

Instead of catching a few more hours of sleep the night before
an exam, pulling an all-nighter may prove to be beneficial,
according to a new sleep study.

Rapid Eye Movement sleep, the dreaming period, does not have an
important role in memory formation, according to UCLA psychiatry
and biobehavioral science professor Jerome Siegel’s
study.

“It is an attractive idea that learning actually occurs in
sleep,” Siegel said. “However, I have read hundreds of
studies and that idea is not well supported by data. There is no
correlation between intelligence and REM sleep.”

The more sleep you get, the more often you reach REM. During
sleep, people go through several non-REM stages before reaching REM
sleep, and as the cycle continues, REM sleep becomes more prevalent
than deep sleep.

Studies show that depriving humans and animals of REM sleep by
awakening them or by drug treatments does not damage their ability
to retain information.

In many cases, humans taking a class of drugs called Monoamine
Oxidase Inhibitors that eliminate REM sleep for periods of months
or even years, have unimpaired or, in some cases, improved memory.
Also, humans with brain damage that prevents REM sleep have normal
memory.

Siegel said this research does not mean it is wise to pull an
all-nighter before any big test and does not promote that idea.

“If you are sleepy, you will not be able to concentrate
and organize the material,” Siegel said. “It just
depends on the test itself, and whether you can make it safely to
the exam.”

For exams that test broad knowledge, like the SAT, Siegel
recommends that students sleep instead of study. But if students
need to learn specific material for a test, staying up to learn the
material would not hinder their ability to retain information.

Research conducted on animals draws similar conclusions to human
studies: there is no correlation between intelligence and REM
sleep. 

Dolphins, considered by scientists to be very intelligent
animals, spend less than 12 minutes of their 10-hour sleep period
in REM sleep.

Animals that have long periods of REM sleep are not necessarily
smarter than animals with short periods of REM sleep, Siegel
said.

Siegel is especially interested in research on the platypus, one
of the most primitive animals and the only duck-billed mammal.
Platypi spend eight hours of their 14-hour sleep period in REM.
Even though platypi spend more than half their sleeping time in
REM, they are not a highly advanced species compared to other
animals.

For humans, the choice to sleep or stay up is an important one
especially for students whose grades may be on the line. Students
try to find a balance between knowing the material for a test and
feeling clear-minded enough to take the test.

In order to function during a test, many students say they try
to get around seven hours of sleep the night before.

Fourth-year biology student Anthony Camara prefers to get sleep
the night before a test. He is, however, willing to stay up early
into the morning to make sure he covers all of the material.

“If I do not get sleep before an English test, I will
still be able to stay up and function. If I have to calculate a lot
of numbers for a science or math test, I make more mistakes when I
do not get sleep,” Camara said.