{"id":292,"date":"2019-12-14T21:57:17","date_gmt":"2019-12-14T21:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/?p=292"},"modified":"2019-12-14T21:57:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T21:57:19","slug":"effect-of-sleep-on-motor-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/post-1-spring-2019\/effect-of-sleep-on-motor-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Effect of Sleep on Motor Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

J. George\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Davidson College, 25% of the students compete in D1\nathletics. These student-athletes must juggle their training with rigorous\nclasswork\u2014no easy task given there are only 24 hours in a day. Unable to miss\nclass, practice, or games, these students sometimes must cut something <\/em>out of their day to fulfill\ntheir obligations. Often, they choose to cut sleep. Lack of sleep, however,\ndecreases their athletic performance. Robert Stickgold conducted a study to\ndetermine the effects of sleep on performance of a motor skill and determined\nthat sleep does improve performance of a motor skills task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Stickgold\u2019s study, participants were given a digital tablet and told to draw a line that was displayed on a separate screen. The task, however, was made more difficult by having to \u201covercome a virtual force \u2018pushing\u2019 the line to one side\u201d *. After having some time to practice the skill, one group slept for approximately eight hours and another group stayed awake for approximately eight hours. Both groups were again asked to complete the drawing task. The change in performance of the two groups from before and after the eight-hour period is shown in the figure. The rested group performed an average of 11% better after compared to a 2% decrease in performance by the non-sleep group. In other words, the sleep group performed an average of 13% better than the non-sleep group. Therefore, sleep is an important aspect of motor memory. While an argument could be made that an increase of performance by 11% after sleep could be caused by chance rather than by sleep, the p-value < 0.005 makes this claim unlikely by quantifying the probability of the difference in the scores being caused by chance to be less than 0.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Performance change of motor skill after 8 hours of sleep or wakefulness *Stickgold<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The data show that sleep improves our motor memory and lack of sleep worsens our motor\nmemory. So, when athletes prioritize schoolwork and practice over sleep, they\nperform worse as athletes during competition. While sleep may seem like the\neasiest aspect of the day to sacrifice, it may not be the most strategic\nchoice. Perhaps the best strategy\nfor ensuring proper\nsleep is simply scheduling well in advance to best\nbudget your time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Stickgold, Robert, Sleep-dependent Memory Consolidation. <\/em>October, 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J. George\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At Davidson College, 25% of the students compete in D1 athletics. These student-athletes must juggle their training with rigorous classwork\u2014no easy task given there are only 24 hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sleep","category-post-1-spring-2019","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}