Feeling forgetful? Just ONE bad night's sleep can have a dramatic effect on out memory, researchers warn
comments
Having a bad night's sleep can impair your memory, researchers have found.
They say that a single night of not sleeping can have a dramatic effect.
They warn that the problem could have serious implication for witnesses in criminal cases.
Researchers found participants deprived of a night¿s sleep were more likely to be unable to remember the details of a simulated burglary they were shown in a series of images correctly
HOW THEY DID IT
The researchers conducted experiments at MSU and UC-Irvine to gauge the effect of insufficient sleep on memory.
They were shown a simulated burglary in a series of images, then asked to recall the details the next day.
Participants who were kept awake for 24 hours, and even those who got five or fewer hours of sleep, were more likely to mix up event details than participants who were well rested.
The study, published online in the journal Psychological Science, found participants deprived of a night's sleep were more likely to flub the details of a simulated burglary they were shown in a series of images.
Distorted memory can have serious consequences in areas such as criminal justice, where eyewitness misidentifications are thought to be the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States, the researchers at Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine say.
'We found memory distortion is greater after sleep deprivation,' said Kimberly Fenn, MSU associate professor of psychology and co-investigator on the study.
'And people are getting less sleep each night than they ever have.'
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls insufficient sleep an epidemic and said it's linked to vehicle crashes, industrial disasters and chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.
'We found that under certain conditions, sleep deprivation can increase the risk of developing false memories,' the researchers wrote.
'Specifically, sleep deprivation increased false memories in a misinformation task when participants were sleep deprived during event encoding, but did not have a significant effect when the deprivation occurred after event encoding.
Researchers warn that the problem could have serious implication for witnesses in criminal cases.
'These experiments are the first to investigate the effect of sleep deprivation on susceptibility to false memories, which can have dire consequences.'
The researchers conducted experiments at MSU and UC-Irvine to gauge the effect of insufficient sleep on memory.
The results: Participants who were kept awake for 24 hours – and even those who got five or fewer hours of sleep – were more likely to mix up event details than participants who were well rested.
'People who repeatedly get low amounts of sleep every night could be more prone in the long run to develop these forms of memory distortion,' Fenn said.
'It's not just a full night of sleep deprivation that puts them at risk.'
Put the internet to work for you.
0 comments:
Post a Comment