Rm Sleep And Memory Essay

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the correlational method as a means for examining the relationship between REM sleep and memory. I will describe previous research and then investigate how REM and memory are associated in young people and in older people. In some ways, the sleep patterns of these two groups are very similar, but in some ways they are not. 1a. REM sleep normally happens in an hour after fall asleep and usually lasting about 30 minutes. People fall in the non-REM sleep in three stages which is the most time during the sleep. As the night goes on, the least deep sleep and deepest sleep stages diminish, and the rest of the sleep just shift between REM sleep and NREM-2 sleep. Younger people tend to have longer REM sleep
than elder people. Elder people have more time awake than young people. 1b. Men usually have an erection in the morning right before they wake up cause by the last REM sleep. Since young people have longer time REM than elder people, that makes young people have longer erection time than elder. 1c. The researcher uses the EEG alpha waves to see the awaking brain waves when is just above to sleep, eyes closed and relaxed. After fall in deep sleep, the researcher uses the delta wave to catch the slow sleep waves. It is the same wave used on both young and elder people only the shape or frequency of the waves might be different. 1d. Our thinking and memory are most active during the peak on every day. For most morning up early person (most person that stay up late or most people that wake up early) tend to have their peaks during the day and active during the day. For most late night up person seems to have their peaks during the night. As people getting aged, their circadian rhythm tend to become a early up morning type, and their thinking will be more active during the day.
Several previous research studies have pointed to the importance of REM sleep in forming new memories.
However, a complete understanding of the roles of REM and non-REM sleep in learning and memory has been elusive. 2a. According to the research done by Pierre Maquet, there are some evidences can show that REM sleep is important in learning and memory. Memory has been reorganized during the REM sleep, so lack of REM sleep will occur effect to the long-term memory traces. Learning ability is damaged by lack of REM sleep but have nothing to do with the NREM sleep. Once the time of REM sleep is back to regular, the ability of learning comes back for both human and animals. 2b. Some of the studies show stress can make the time of REM sleep become longer, but there are evidences proofed that the lack of REM sleep have more effect to learning ability than stress. 2c. Hippocampal cells are important to learning and memory. The duration of hippocampal cells to work is after the REM sleep which is the period of NREM sleep. In order for hippocampal cells to work normally, there is a required for enough REM sleep. According to Pierre Maquet, there are specific macroscopic patterns send by hippocampal cells only being active during the REM
sleep.
The architecture of sleep is different between the young and the old (see Figure 1). Differences between groups in the amount and quality of REM may predict differences in learning. It is conceivable that the relationship between learning and REM is stronger in the young than in the old. 3a. The difference of the architecture for each sleep stages between young adults and elderly is clearly shown in the figure above. First, we can see the hours of sleep in young is wider and less frequency than the elderly.That’s means the young adults have more smooth sleep than elderly. Next, compare the hours of sleep in each stages, noticed that elderly spend more time awake and less time fall in REM sleep than young adults. (Lastly, we count the time that it takes for young people and elderly to fall in each stage of sleep) Last count the time of young people and elderly fall in each stage of sleep, find out it is hard for elderly to fall in deep NREM sleep and young people tend to fall in deep sleep more early and the transition between each stages are more smooth. 3b. Compared to young people, elderly take longer to fall and stay asleep. Bad sleep quality makes elderly suffer from lost of memory and sleep disorders. According to another research, elderly have high risk of fall, lost of appetite and increase of blood pressure. 3c. Since the REM sleep time is less for elderly than young adults, the part of learning in REM sleep decrease as well. Older brain has developed completely than younger brain, that make the older brain needs less REM sleep than young to reorganize memory and to learning new things. 3d. Correlation method is used to measure how strong the relationship between two variables. It is the perfect way to show how strong the relationship between REM sleep in learning in young people and in older people.
Data were collected from a group of young people and a group of older people who first learned a list of non-words to test the hypothesis using the correlational method.
Each participant was measured on: (1) total time spent asleep, (2) duration of REM sleep, and (3) percentage accuracy in learning the list of non-words. 4a. We took the range of time asleep for each group. The range for young people group is 601 minus 342 is equal to 259. The range for older people group is 689 minus 342 is 457. The older people group with higher range have more sleep pattern. Then we calculate the average of total time asleep for each group. Young group is 481.4, and older group is 420 min. The young people group with higher average time of fall asleep slept more. 4b. The duration for REM sleep has stronger relation in young participants than in the older participants. Compare the REM duration and the memory score between young and older participants shows that in young participants the longer the REM duration the higher the memory score, but there are not specific relationship between REM duration and memory for older participants.
4c.
The results of the correlational method were valuable in addressing the hypothesis under study. However, future investigations may need to adopt techniques that improve upon those used here. 5a. This study trying to show the relationship between REM sleep and memory is stronger in young adults than elder. The correlation perfectly proofed the hypothesis. Since the data shows there are relationship between REM sleep and memory for young participants which is position correlation, and no specific relation for elderly. 5b.