Cognitive Performance
Poojan Nikunjkumar Mehta 2012CS10241
Siddarth KM 2012CS10256
Index Terms
Sleep, Sleep deprivation, memory consolidation, temporal memory, decision making, visual processing.
Introduction
Sleep is an everyday phenomenon, which many people take for granted. It is very important to know its need and what happens when we don’t sleep properly. This article is aimed at studying different theories regarding sleep and the effects of sleep deprivation in order to quote the importance of sleep in everyday life.
Sleep is the state of mind when consciousness is suspended. In order to explain this state of dormancy several theories were put forward. In early days, two key theories prevailed – Restorative theory and Adaptive theory. Both explained sleep from different perspectives. There is another important theory explaining the dependence of memory on sleep. We have explained them all in detail in this paper.
Project Statement
Many people, especially students neglect proper sleep and have highly irregular sleep timings. There are many papers on the benefits on sleep and many experimental papers on different effects of sleep deprivation. This term paper is aimed at compiling some of the key disadvantages of sleep deprivation so as to highlight its seriousness. Method
Review of different and relevant experiments is done to understand the need for sleep and effects of sleep loss on our mind. A survey was conducted among 54 students of IIT Delhi to study about their sleeping habits. Towards the end, we have
shown how conclusions of the review study and the survey study lead us to certain important implications for the students and academic authority of IIT Delhi.
Results of the review of research papers:
There are many sleep theories that researchers have given. However, they all can be classified into the following key sleep theories.
Key Sleep Theories:
Restorative:
References: 1. Stickgold, Robert (2005). “Sleep-dependent memory consolidation". Nature, Vol 437 2. Kong, Danyang, Soon, Chun Siong, Chee, Michael. (2010). ”Reduced visual processing capacity in sleep deprived persons" Thompson-Schill, Sharon L. (2004). “Interfering with theories of sleep and memory: Declarative memory and associative interference” Current Biology, 16, 1290-1294. 4. Webb, Wilse B. (1988). “A behavioral model of sleep”. Sleep, 11(5):488-496, Raven Press Ltd., New York; 9. Pilcher, June J., Walters, Amy S. (1997) “How sleep deprivation affects psychological variables related to college students ' cognitive performance”,