High School Daze - Sleep vs. Studying

Many of us may think late-night studying is at least partially beneficial, but as a study posted in the journal Child Development explains, late-night studying may actually do more harm than good. As we sleep, our brain organizes the information we learned from the day before, as well as makes various connections with the large amount of information we learned in school or studied earlier. A better strategy would be to wake up earlier and study than to stay up later in the night. Check out the NPR talk below:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/08/22/159435167/high-school-daze-the-perils-of-sacrificing-sleep-for-late-night-studying?start=1065

Although not explained in the article and as I mentioned in my earlier post on memory, our brain goes over muscle movements during our sleep. This is why it is important for athlete's to get enough rest, aside from physically restoring themselves, their brains repeats the muscle movements they did in practice the day before. 

Pace yourself when studying! By cramming, you are putting information in your brain that will only stay temporarily, and chances are you'll forget a majority of what you studied the night before as you're taking the test. This is because, similar to how brains confuse memories, your brain will have a hard time differentiating between overlapping information, simply because you have not consistently exposed yourself to the information over a longer period of time. By cramming the night before, you're trying to get all the information inside your head in one sitting, and it's quite likely that you won't be able to recall the information during the exam.