Getting good quality sleep when you are a young or middle-aged adult may help your maintain the health of your brain when you are older. Sleeping soundly helps you keep your memory and learning in adulthood and appears to predict better mental functioning as you age.
These findings are from an examination by researchers at Baylor University in Waco, TX, and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta of 50 years worth of research on sleep. They examined results from about 200 studies on sleep and mental functioning, including brain-wave studies, experiments with sleep deprivation, napping, and sleep interventions such as sleeping pills.
"We came across studies that showed that sleeping well in middle age predicted better mental functioning 28 years later," said Michael K. Scullin, Ph.D., director of Baylor University's Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory.
They found that the benefits for memory of regularly getting a good night's sleep in young adulthood are unmistakable. Deep sleep at night helps memory by taking the day's experiences and replaying them, which strengthens these memories and allows them to be recollected better at a later time. This memory consolidation during is true through middle age.
However, older adults, those over age 70, tend get less sleep and poorer sleep. They get less deep sleep and dream less and tend to wake up more often during the night. Deep sleep and dreaming are important for overall brain functioning. However, the link between sleep and memory lessens with age, Scullin said, in a press release from Baylor. "It's the difference between investing up front rather than trying to compensate later," he said.
Scullin noted that the average person may sleep nearly 250,000 hours-or more than 10,000 24-hour days-if they live to age 85.
The article was published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.