Teen Sleep Research Study

Join us at the City of Cleveland’s All City Back to School FEST on August 9th from 9 AM–Noon at Cleveland Public Auditorium. Free school supplies, resources, and family fun for ALL Cleveland families. Free parking in the Willard Garage!

Meet Ify, one of the Research Assistants for the Adolescent Sleep & Fatigue research study! Ify is a student at CWRU, majoring in Medical Anthropology on the Pre-Health track.

Meet Jim, the Principal Investigator for the Adolescent Sleep & Fatigue research team!

How Does Sleep Effect Our Memory?

The CDC reported last May that 10% of all US adults 45 years and older are experiencing worsening memory loss, a number that is expected to continue to rise over the next 30 years. Worsening memory loss is often the first sign of dementia and there are many contributing factors--such as physical activity, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, and sleep.

If you are experiencing memory loss, the first thing you can do is see a clinician to discuss reducing your risk of worsening memory loss. Here, we will talk about the link between sleep and memory!

There is a plethora of data supporting the strong link between improved memory and quality sleep. A nap of as little as 6 minutes has been shown to benefit our memory; A period of sleep lasting 3 hours can be detected in memory up to 4 years later, but, as expected, the most benefit in our memory comes after a full 8 hour night of sleep. This benefit is due to how memories are consolidated over the different stages of our sleep.

The beginning and end of our 8 hour night of sleep are dominated by two types of sleep: "slow wave sleep" (often referred to as deep sleep) and rapid eye movement sleep (REM; and yes, our eyes are moving rapidly under our eyelids!). Our slow wave sleep benefits the consolidation of things like language, facts, things we learned in school that week. Our rapid eye movement sleep encodes our procedural and emotional memories--how to ride a bike or the joy you felt that day.

As we sleep, we are oscillating between slow wave sleep and REM sleep, but the most important times for memory are the beginning and the end of our 8 hour cycle. Disrupting these stages of sleep with things like noice, extreme changes of temperature, and especially light can disrupt our stages of sleep and even our memory! This is one reason why practicing good sleep hygiene is important (which we will post about soon!).

If you are interested in participating in a research study about sleep, please contact us or fill out the form that is linked in our bio!