On May 26, Beijing time, according to foreign media reports, if most people don't sleep well at night, they will feel drowsy, hard to think and unable to study or work normally the next day. You may not be able to concentrate and your memory may decline significantly. However, if you can't sleep well for many years, your cognitive function may decline.
Adjust the three elements of sleep and send you a self-help guide for insomnia
Lack of sleep for 3 consecutive nights and half of immune function
Whether infants or the elderly, poor sleep can affect people's mood and behavior. So how much sleep do we need to keep our brain working properly in the long run? A new study published in the journal natural aging provides an answer to this question.
Sleep is an important part of maintaining normal brain function. The brain reorganizes and "charges" during sleep. In addition to removing toxic by-products and strengthening the immune system, sleep also plays a key role in the process of "memory consolidation". During this period, memory fragments based on their own experience will be transformed into long-term memory.
Quality and quantity of sleep can make us full of spirit, comfortable in body and mind, and improve creativity and thinking ability.
When researchers looked at infants aged 3 to 12 months, they found that there was a correlation between better sleep and better behavioral performance in the first year of their life, such as the ability to adapt to new environments and effectively regulate their emotions. These are crucial to the early development of cognitive function, including "cognitive flexibility" (the ability to quickly change the perspective of thinking), and related to the well-being of later life.
The regularity of sleep seems to be related to the brain's "default mode network", which involves brain regions that are active when we are awake but do not perform specific tasks. The network contains brain regions that are important for cognitive function, such as the posterior cingulate cortex (which stops activity during cognitive tasks), the parietal lobe (which processes sensory information), and the prefrontal cortex (related to planning and complex cognitive activities).
There are signs of a link between poor sleep quality and changes in this network connection in adolescents and young people. This is critical because the brain continues to develop in late adolescence and early adulthood. Therefore, the interference of the network may have an indirect impact on cognitive ability, such as attention, memory, and more complex cognitive processing ability.
Changes in sleep patterns are an important feature of aging, such as inability to sleep, short sleep and so on. These may be one of the reasons for cognitive decline and mental disorders in the elderly.
How much sleep is best
The new study, published this time, hopes to further understand the relationship between sleep, cognition and well-being. After analyzing the situation of nearly 500000 middle-aged and elderly people in the UK biological sample bank, the researchers found that sleeping too much or too little can affect cognitive performance. However, the study did not include children and adolescents. Because their brains are still developing, they may have different requirements for the optimal length of sleep.
The key finding of this study is that 7 hours per night is the best sleep length. On this basis, less or more sleep is not good for cognitive and mental health. People who slept just that long performed better on average on cognitive tests (including processing speed, visual attention, memory, etc.). And people also need to keep 7 hours of sleep every night, and the length can't fluctuate too much.
That said, people react differently when they lack sleep. The researchers found that the relationship between sleep duration, cognitive ability and mental health was regulated by genetic factors and brain structure. They noted that the brain regions most vulnerable to sleep deprivation included the hippocampus, which is mainly responsible for learning and memory, and parts of the prefrontal cortex related to emotional control.
However, while sleep may have an impact on the brain, the reverse may also be true. Perhaps it is the brain area related to sleep and wakefulness regulation that has shrunk due to aging, leading to various sleep problems in old age. For example, aging may reduce the production and secretion of melatonin, which controls sleep rhythms. This finding seems to be consistent with other evidence of an association between sleep length and Alzheimer's and dementia.
Seven hours of sleep is the best length to prevent dementia, and this study shows that adequate sleep can also alleviate the symptoms of dementia by protecting memory. This means that we should monitor the sleep of patients with senile mental disorders and dementia to improve their cognitive function, mental health and well-being.
So, how can we improve sleep in our daily life
First of all, we can ensure that the bedroom is cool and well ventilated. In addition, don't drink too much wine before going to bed, and don't watch thrillers and other exciting things. It's best to go to sleep in a calm and soothing state, and think about things that make you happy and relaxed, such as the experience of the last time you went to the beach, which is useful to many people.
Mobile app or wearable devices and other technical means can also be used to record sleep to ensure the same length of sleep every night, so as to improve mental health.
Therefore, in order to better enjoy life, we might as well start by monitoring our sleep patterns and ensuring 7 hours of sleep a day.