Sleep Deprivation: Why Does Sleep Affect Memory?

It is an often occurrence for people to blame their miscalculated mistakes on the lack of sleep they obtained the night before. Typically when a person makes a small, often embarrassing, mistake the excuse that person will give is “I am running on no sleep”. Most people generally relate to this saying, and excuse small mistakes caused by lack of sleep because it is an occurrence that happens to almost every person. If the excuse “I am running on no sleep” is an accurate excuse, then therefore it must have some type of true factor, or else it would not be accepted as a universal excuse. Does sleep deprivation affect memory? Through research it is concluded that sleep can affect people when participating in task like vigilance perception (Deaton,
In the experiments when comparing the brains ability to form accurate memories, there was a positive correlation to those whom did not have proper amounts as sleep, where as those who did have the proper amount of sleep showed better functioning memory. Those who were “sleep deprived” had apparent reduction in stimulated response rather than an actual change in the brains rate of decay (Elkin, & Murray, 1974). The experimental group of people were in fact affected by the loss of sleep. Those in the experimental group where effected on their ability to correctly present the information that was given to them. For example, in the experimental group those who had been awake for thirty-seven, forty-nine, and fifty-five hours made more errors due to miscopying the information, rather than not retaining the information at all (Elkin, & Murray, 1974). This example suggest that those who have not had an adequate amount of sleep suffer from a reduced attention span, which reduces the attention paid toward the object of their focus. As the experiment continued, those who had sleep loss had issues recognizing information. As sleep deprivation increased, a person’s ability to perform became delayed. Those who had been “sleep deprived” performed considerably worse throughout the experiment than those in the control group, who had an appropriate amount of sleep. The most
These findings are support by the fact that those who had gone without sleep had significate change in their ability to focus and process the information they were presented. We can see the impact through the person’s inability to interrupt the information they were presented with accurately. It is also notable in the person’s ability to use immediate response, since the longer the subject went without sleep, the more delayed a person’s response became. Therefore, through the example studies of the experimental group, we can conclude that although sleep deprivation does not decay memory, it does affect the ability to perceive