Sleep Restriction Hurts
New research into the destructive effects of sleep loss:
As the pace of life quickens and it becomes harder to balance home and work, many people meet their obligations by getting less sleep.But sleep deprivation impairs spatial learning - including remembering how to get to a new destination. And now scientists are beginning to understand how that happens: Learning spatial tasks increases the production of new cells in an area of the brain involved with spatial memory called the hippocampus. Sleep plays a part in helping those new brain cells survive.
A team of researchers from the University of California and Stanford University found that sleep-restricted rats had a harder time remembering a path through a maze compared to their rested counterparts. And unlike the rats that got enough sleep, the sleep-restricted rats showed reduced survival rate of new hippocampus cells.
Sleep deprivation: it really is just for dummies.