Sporadic Sleep Is No Sleep At All

Pulling an all-nighter for that big test tomorrow? Put the books down and get some sleep.

A new study released yesterday by Robert A. Stickgold, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, suggests that without sleep, a person's memory of dates and places is only fleeting.

Students would be better off getting a solid night's sleep than cramming for a few extra hours, he said.

Stickgold also said his study belies a frequent assumption of college students everywhere--that sleepless nights can be made up a few days later when things slow down.

"The students engage in what I call 'sleep bulimia,' in which they binge sleep on weekends and purge, abstaining from sleep all week long," he said. "It's going to be just as destructive as real bulimia."

For his study, Stickgold trained 24 students to recognize a pattern of diagonal lines flashed briefly on a computer screen. Half the students then enjoyed a good night's sleep. The other half were kept up through the entire night.

Three days later, Stickgold found that the students who pulled an all-nighter weren't any better at recognizing the line patterns than they had been originally. The students who slept, however, remembered the patterns and recognized them more easily.

"Regardless of when we trained the subject, they cannot show improvement in performance until they've slept on it," Stickgold said.

Stickgold said he believes that when students sleep, their memories are consolidated and reorganized so that information stays with them in the long term.

Stickgold also said that while most people need eight to eight and a half hours of sleep to feel well-rested, the time can vary from individual to individual--though few people get as much as they should.

"Your body tells you how much sleep you need, and we all ignore it," Stickgold said. "The test I tell people is, if you drink coffee before 10 a.m., then you're just self-medicating."

Stickgold said that in his experience, Harvard students--with difficult classes, problem sets and midterms--are particularly prone to ignoring their need for sleep. He blamed Harvard for perpetuating the nasty habit.

"Shame on Harvard for trying to put in another meal at midnight instead of backing off on the workload," he said.

Some students, like Valentina M. Perez '03, have already learned the hard way. Perez said she averaged three hours of sleep a night her first year but then changed her habits; she now clocks in at least seven hours of sleep per night.

"I've already learned that when you sleep more, you do better," Perez said. "The key is time management--sleep definitely makes a difference on your output."