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Article: Princeton study finds that sleep-deprivation may impair memory
- Article from:
- University Wire
- Article date:
- December 6, 2006
- Author:
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Cornelia Hall
University Wire
12-06-2006
(The Daily Princetonian) (U-WIRE) PRINCETON, N.J. -- McGraw Center tutors may be right after all: Getting a good night's sleep before an exam appears to bode better for performance than staying up all night to cram.
In a recent study by Princeton University psychology professor Elizabeth Gould, rats who were sleep-deprived for 72 hours exhibited increased levels of the stress hormone glucocorticoid. These high stress levels in turn reduced neurogenesis -- the birth of new neurons -- in the rats' hippocampuses, a part of the brain critical for learning and memory.
Though the findings pertain only to rats, they are in line with previous research on ...