I’ve told you before how important sleep is and I hope you listened. In case you have persisted with a pattern of insomnia, I’m going to point your attention toward some interesting findings from last week’s meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, which had to be a total snoozer. (Get it?)
Sleep may be necessary for the processing of emotion
It seems that an adequate amount of REM sleep affects our ability to process other people’s emotions. Using photographs, researcheers found that people managing to get some REM sleep–where dreams occur–during a nap identified happiness in photographs more than other participants. What’s more, those who had lower-level sleep or none at all were more tuned to negative expressions. Could such a “bad” focus when tired perpetuate more anxiety and less sleep?
Deeper sleep leads to better problem solving
REM sleep helps to create associations between unrelated ideas, meaning that seemingly disparate terms (such as cookie, heart and sixteen) can be joined together by another (in this case from the study, “sweet”). Participants were shown several three-word groups similar to the example, then asked to find a fourth “linking” word during a morning test and another in the afternoon. Those achieving REM sleep improved 40% between the two, while the other groups (non-REM sleep, quiet rest) showed no change.
What does this mean? Well, aside from the fact that sleep enhances memory formation (it’s not the only time you do it) and allows tissues to repair, clearly your brain is at work to make sense of your daily experiences (maybe even comparing them to the past) and possibly even plot a course to your next destination. Maybe you would be more likely to find a new job or better in tune to those you work for or with.
Thomas Edison was known to take catnaps to increase productivity and Dr. John Medina points out in Brain Rules that people squeezing some shut-eye into their day are more effective for the rest of the afternoon.
What difference could a few extra (better) Zs make in your life?
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