Don’t get up yet, lazy bones

Teenagers have a reputation for sleeping in late in the morning, as any parent trying

to rush them off to school knows well. And usually, despite your best efforts, they

don’t plan on changing anything. Well, now science is on their side. Studies have

found that at the onset of puberty teenagers develop a delayed sleep pattern known

as a two-hour sleep-wake phase. This simply means that that due to their body’s

changing needs they need to go to sleep later at night and need more sleep in the

morning. Teenagers still only need about nine hours of sleep each night; they just

need it at different times.

So how does this different sleep pattern affect the teenage brain? In a recent

study one high school decided to delay the start time to allow their students to

get extra sleep in the morning. The teenagers were more alert and reported feel-

ing less irritated during the day. Their mental health also improved and fewer stu-

dents reported feeling depressed. Fewer students skipped class, which meant that

opportunities for learning were better. The study was considered a success by the

school and the students, and the late start for the school is now a permanent fix-

ture. So the next time you have trouble getting your teenager out of bed, remember

she’s building her brain with her sleep pattern

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

 Feeling good from exercise Exercise is also great for your mental health. It doesn’t just leave you feeling good, but it can also improve feelings of depression and anxiety (see Chapter 9 for more on how to improve your mental health). Plasticity or neuroplasticity is the way the brain can change throughout your life by forming new connections between brain cells, which are called neurons. Most of the change occurs during infancy and childhood when the brain is learning and growing the most. But the brain can also change after an injury that’s dam- aged some part of its functioning. More recently, science has also discovered that the brain is ‘plastic’, even in adulthood. Whenever you’re learning something new, your brain changes to adapt to this new information (see Chapter 7 for how this happens with taxi drivers). Exercise also plays a role in brain cell (neuron) growth in the hippocampus of adults. Schizophrenia is associated with smaller brain volume, particu- lar...
Lire la suite
 Where you are matters A diving instructor was puzzled because his divers kept forgetting objects that they’d found underwater, even when he asked the divers about the objects shortly after they were back on dry land. To find out why this was the case, some psycholo- gists conducted an experiment with divers. The psychologists gave one group of underwater divers a list of words to learn underwater and gave another group a list to learn on land. They then tested the divers’ memories of the word list both on land and underwater. The group that learned the list underwater remembered the list much better in the water but struggled to remember it on land. In contrast, the group who learned the list on land had better memories on land but forgot the list when they were underwater. This story is a great example of how remembering where you were when you learned the information can boost your memory.
Lire la suite
 A lesson from the past: Lobotomising the prefrontal cortex Your knowledge of a lobotomy may be based on Jack Nicolson’s excellent portrayal of a rebellious patient at a mental hospital in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. According to the other patients in the hospital, a lobotomy effectively reduced someone to the same mental state as a shop window mannequin – expressionless and unemotional. The lobotomy procedure consists of cutting the brain connections that go in and out of the prefrontal cortex (see ‘Keeping the brain alert and active’ for informa- tion on the prefrontal cortex). Doctors considered a lobotomy the final step for modifying extreme behaviour when other treatments, such as shock therapy or electrical shock treatment, failed to change a patient’s behaviour. Doctors thought that a lobotomy calmed the patient, reduced aggressive behaviour, and improved the patient’s quality of life. However, scientists now know that this procedure is no longer nec...
Lire la suite