Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Vanessa Vidal | email: vvidal@itba.edu.ar
Vanessa Vidal 1°2°, Matías Pretel 1°, Lucila Capurro 1°, Leonela Tassone 1°2°, Malen Daiana Moyano 1°2°, Romina Malacari 3°, Ignacio Brusco 2°4°, Fabricio Ballarini 5°6°, Cecilia Forcato 1°2°
1° Laboratorio de Sueño y Memoria, Departamento de Ciencias de la vida, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA).
2° Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Quilmes High School, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
4° Centro de Neuropsiquiatría y Neurología de la Conducta – CENECON, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires.
5° Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencias “Prof. E. De Robertis” (IBCN), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
6° Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Capital Federal, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
During wakefulness the constant encoding of new information leads to an increase in the net synaptic strength in the brain that saturates learning. During sleep synaptic downscaling takes place allowing new encoding after waking up. This constant saturation of learning could also be observed in students, especially high school students who usually have an important sleep debt. In this study our goal was to apply naps at school to diminish the detrimental effect of the lack of sleep on memory acquisition. We conducted a one-day experiment in the classroom. First, we divided each course in two, half the students took a nap in the school library while a polysomnography took place (3 EEG wireless system), and the other half remained in the classroom performing quiet activities. Then, they all had a Biology lecture with their own teacher and took a multiple choice test. We found that students who had slept a nap showed a significantly better performance in the test than students who remained awake. These results bring new evidence for the implementation of short naps in real-life settings.