Is It Really Productive To Pull An All-Nighter?

First Posted: Apr 20, 2015 11:08 PM EDT
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Last minute studying for an exam might seem like a good idea if you're not prepared, but will it really be any help? A new study suggests that it's unlikely to do any good in reality.

Scientists found that sleep, memory and learning are all deeply interwoven. Most animals that didn't get enough rest may struggle to remember something over a short amount of time, a process that's known as memory consolidation.

Researchers examined dorsal paired medial (DPM) neurons, otherwise known as memory consolidators in Drosophila. They found that when DPM neurons are activated, flies involved in the experiment slept more. Yet when they were deactivated, they kept buzzing; that's because the memory consolidators inhibit wakefulness as they convert short-term to long-term memories.

"It's almost as if that section of the mushroom body were saying 'hey, stay awake and learn this,'" said researcher Bethany Christmann in a news release. "Then, after a while, the DPM neurons start signaling to suppress that section, as if to say 'you're going to need sleep if you want to remember this later.'"

Researchers noted that with future studies, better understanding just how memory and sleep are connected can help them to unravel the secrets of the human brain.

"Knowing that sleep and memory overlap in the fly brain can allow researchers to narrow their search in humans," Christmann said. "Eventually, it could help us figure out how sleep or memory is affected when things go wrong, as in the case of insomnia or memory disorders."

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