Late clock

(By Alexandre and Renata)

Sleep deprivation can result in nuclear explosions. This is what happened in Chernobyl, Ucrania in April 1986. Along with the huge pressure to complete the tasks within deadlines, the staff was forced to lose hours of sleep in order to maintain their jobs, resulting in lack of attention with the security system and an overheated reactor. The capitalist culture of “24 hours/7 days of week” has been leading some people to shorten their period of sleep. Bad quality of sleep could offer risks for the human beings, such as cognitive impairment, emotional disturbances and memory disorders.

First, the lack of sleeping quality may result in problems to the human’s cognitive system. In this situation, attention and capacity of concentration are sharply decreased and time of reaction is greatly slowed due to the fact that during the sleep, important hormones, which are related to judgment, impulse control, attention and visual association, act on the prefrontal cortex. For example, on Mar 25th 1989, Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker, shocked towards a reef at the Alasca shore and two hundred million liters of oil were spilled in the ocean. (CONTINUATION OF # 1…)

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Third, while some people may believe that a good night sleep is not related to the learning process, studies showed that wakefulness impairs the consolidation of memory. The mechanism was studied by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania. The findings provided evidence that sleep helps regulate neuronal function in the hippocampus, which is responsible for spatial orientation and recognition of physical surroundings, known as contextual memory. According to the study, memory consolidation happens over a period of hours after training for a task, and certain cellular processes have to occur at precise times.