How Sleep Affects Thinking

- Learn how sleep affects thinking

Your sleep habits:
1. Most nights, I sleep fewer than 6 hours/ 6-8 hours/ 9 or more hours.
2. I am most likely to skip sleep in order to hang out (v-lang thang, đi chơi) with friends.
3. I usually make up for lost sleep (bù đắp thời gian mất ngủ) by adjusting my schedule.

Are your answers similar to or different from your partner's answers?
Which of your answers do you think is the most interesting?
Do you think it is possible to make up for lost sleep? Why or why not?

A college student health center about how lack of sleep can affect academic performance: The importance of sleep to academic success
- It's no secret that many college students do not sleep enough.
(Academic students, social life, part-time or full-time jobs, and relationships are often more important than sleep) Students experience even more sleep deprivation (n-bị tước quyền) as midterm and final exams approach.

Sleep is Serious Business:
- Lack of sleep can cause these harmful side effects: daytime drowsiness (ngủ gật ban ngày), inability to cope with stress, weight gain, poor health, low energy.
- Most importantly for students, sleep deprivation makes studying and learning more difficult. It also hurts the body's ability to stay/keep healthy.
- To show that many young adults are suffering from sleep deprivation that is severe (adj-khắt khe) [si'viơ] enough to impair (v-làm suy yếu) daytime activities.
- These young people get an average of 6.8 hours of rest per night, but many function on much less. According to current research, most undergraduates need 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep (most adults, 7-9 hours).

Burning the candle at both ends:
- College life only increases the problem of sleep deprivation as students try to burn the candle at both ends. (some students work a part-time job to help pay for college expenses, some students have to support a family while going to school). Because of all these pressures, there is also an increase in stress.
- Stress can lead to insomnia (n-chứng mất ngủ) (the inability to sleep).
- Sleeplessness is especially bad as final exams approach and students cram (v-ôn luyện) for exams. When students force themselves to stay awake to study, they have to function on even less sleep. Too many nights of staying awake can lead to long-term sleep problems.

sleepless (adj-thức, ko ngủ)
sleeplessness (n-sự khó ngủ, ko ngủ được)

Sleep is a necessity, not a luxury:
Your top academic performance depends on getting enough sleep. So remember, as you plan your schedule, be sure to allow plenty of time for sleep. You will have more energy, better health, and greater chances for academic success!.

_ How much sleep do college students need and how much do they usually get? What is the approximate amount of sleep they lose per night?
_ What are two reasons that college students don't get enough sleep?
_ What are three negative results of not getting enough sleep?

Lack of sleep causes many problems. For example:
- It hurts the body's ability to stay healthy. Usually, this is the result of the fact that the immune system [hệ thống miễn dịch] (the part of the body that protects us from infection) is weakened without sleep. it is easier to get infections (nhiễm, nhiễm trùng), such as colds and flu.
- Another problem that occurs is weight gain (n-tăng cân). This happens because the body loses the ability to handle sugar; for instance, it turns sugar into fat rather than burning it as energy.

_ It's a problem to feel drowsy (adj-uể oải,buồn ngủ) when driving because drivers can't concentrate and react quickly.
_ It's good to pull over and take a nap (chợp mắt một lát) because you feel less tired after resting.
_ It is not the best idea to listen to loud music because the effect doesn't work for very long.

Sleep advice:
some of the advice that is given on how to improve sleep: 03 major areas
- Psychological solutions: meaning what can we do to get our minds to relax.
- Physical solutions: meaning what we can do to get our bodies to relax.
- Environment: the space that we sleep in.

1. Have you ever had too much sleep? What was the situation? What effect does too much sleep have on person's mind, and personality?
2. Work alone and write a list of five pieces of advice for a classmate who is having trouble sleeping. Put them in order from the most effective to the least effective.
3. Do you agree that getting sleep is necessary in order to do well on a test? Have you ever crammed and done well? Done poorly? Why do you think this happened?
4. What was another idea in the lecture that you found important and interesting? Why?

Practice Lecture:
A survey question: If you become sleepy (buồn ngủ) while driving, what do you do to stay/keep awake? (You all had techniques, things that you do, tricks [v-lừa, đánh lừa] really, to stay awake while driving.)

- One technique that many of you use is that you use some kind of loud noise to stay awake. For example, many of you turn the radio up and open the car window to hear the traffic noise.
=> But let me say a bit about this. This might seem like a good idea, but actually, it doesn't work for very long. The loud noise and wind make you feel more awake briefly, but they won't keep you from feeling drowsy (adj-ngủ gà ngủ gật) behind the wheel. [sau vô lăng]
- Drinking caffeine was another technique that many of you use. Some examples of the different caffeine-rich things you all use to help you keep awake: coffee, tea, soft drinks with caffeine, eat chocolate. (contain caffeine too)
=> That's true. But let's look at this technique. the caffeine drinks are a common way to try to stay awake while driving, buy the truth is that caffeine only helps for short time, and drivers still feel drowsy.
=> So it may keep you from falling asleep, but it won't stop drowsiness, which can have a bad effect on your judgment (sự phán đoán, phán xét) and reaction time.

sleepy (adj) buồn ngủ, ngái ngủ
drowsy (adj) ngủ gà ngủ gật ['drauzi]
drowsiness (n) tình trạng ngủ gà ngủ gật ['drauzinis]

- Look at one last technique from your surveys, the best really. This technique involves getting some sleep. For instance, one student said that he pulls over and takes a nap. (smart thinking) The fact is that stopping and taking a 15-20 minutes nap, just a short one, it is the safest way to stay awake on a long drive.

Lecture:
Discuss the reasons why we sleep. (in other words) Why do people sleep? (we'll answer the question), And you might find some of this especially interesting because I'll be discussing some of the interesting evidence on how sleep affects learning:

Why do our bodies need sleep? we all know how it feel when we need sleep: we feel drowsy, we have trouble concentrating.

Let's look a bit at two of the reasons (why we sleep):
Scientists continue to do studies to learn more about exactly why humans need sleep, they aren't 100% sure. They don't know, for example: why human beings cannot simply rest, meaning lay down quietly, as insects do. But they do know some of the reasons why we sleep. (two of the reasons):
- One reason is that it helps our bodies recover. Sleep helps the body recover from all the work it did while the person was awake. (This makes sense, right?) Because we all know how bad we feel when we suffer from sleep deprivation. [đép ri vei sn]
- Another interesting reason why we sleep. These studies show that sleep is important for learning. It aids [eid] or helps learning. Let's look at how this works: As a person sleeps, the brain continues to work. It performs tasks like organizing long-term memory, and integrating new information learned during the day, and physical tasks like repairing and renewing the nerve (dây thần kinh) cells in the brain.

How important:
- This is really important for you as students. In some experiments, a person trying to learn something doesn't actually learn it and improve their knowledge until after they have had more than six hours of sleep.
- A study done at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, suggest that students who studied hard all week and then stayed up all night partying on the weekend lost as much as 30% of what they had learned during the week.

Why do you think this is true?
- It seems the brain needs time - time to file away (v-sắp xếp) some new information and skills in the proper places in the brain so that they can be found and used later.

Scientists want to know more:
- One way scientists learn about the reasons we need to sleep is they look at what happens to people when they don't sleep enough - when they are deprived (-v bị tước đoạt) of sleep.
- There are many studies done to learn about the effects of sleep deprivation. These studies all show the same thing: over time, sleep deprivation can have serious side effects (n-tác dung phụ-kéo theo). There are three areas that are most affected. (There is impairment (n-làm suy yếu) of our thinking ability and impairment of our physical abilities and also our moods, our psychological condition is affected.)

Now, let's look at some examples of how the thinking ability of the brain is affected by lack of sleep:
+ (this diagram of the brain, look at just one part of the brain, the frontal lobe (n-thùy tráng) - the part of the brain that is at the forehead) So what does the frontal lobe do? It helps the body with speech and with creative thinking ... there have been some interesting studies that show there is less activity in frontal lobe when people are sleep deprived. So, this means that people who are sleep deprived have difficulty with functions performed in the frontal lobe. (for example: when speech is affected, people are less able to speak clearly. This means that their speech is slurred. They stutter or speak in a flat, monotone voice, speak at a slower than usual pace.)
+ Another example is, sleep-deprived people don't have speed or creative abilities to cope with making quick and logical decisions. And once they have made the decisions, they don't act on them very successfully.
+ Studies have also shown that a lack of sleep impairs people's ability to focus on several different but related tasks at one time. For instance, that tasks are done but more slowly and less efficiently. A good example of this is that a person can react to a complex problem, but similar to the verbal (bằng miệng) tests, they will probably pick an unoriginal (adj-ko đầu tiên) or easy solution.

Summary:
So, you can see how important sleep is to the brain and to your performance in class and on tests, where speaking clearly and having creative answers and both very important skills.
So, for those of you who usually burn the candle at both ends.