There has been a lot of research as well as a lot of controversies regarding sleep and its functions in different brain functions, including memory and learning. I am not particularly interested in the controversies, because there are less scopes of controversies in actual science. And both sleep and memory fall well under the domain of actual science and hence we need to focus on unification of theories instead of divisions. 

Whatever theories came up till now, and whatever controversies aroused, we can easily find one simple consensus and that is, we do need good sleep for better memory and learning functions. And most of the controversies actually point to some larger and wider dimension of unification which we perhaps fail to perceive because most often we fail to see the big picture of the whole system. 

Anyway that’s a different story, and I would not have much scope to discuss that over here. So let us focus on our subject of this article, the use of sleep for better memory (and hence learning).

Before discussing the relation of memory with sleep, it will be wise to know a little bit about our memory and its functions. Here I will try to give a brief introduction and idea on human memory, which will be essential for our current discussion on sleep and memory. Though human memory and its functions are very deep subjects, which are also very lengthy, here we just go through the basic notions. 

This is a basic definition of human memory that you may find in a Google search page once you will input some phrase like I inputted, “human memory”. 

In this definition they have covered mainly the functional definition of memory as it is an essential process to remembering important things and later executing according to that to achieve goals and objectives. 

We can see there are 3 types of memory viz. sensory memory, short term memory (temporary memory) and long term memory (permanent memory). For students, regarding their studies and academic progress, the latter two types, i.e. the temporary memory and permanent memory are more relevant. So in this article we will discuss these two types of memory and how sleep can affect them. 

This is somewhat like the RAM (Random Access Memory) of your computer or smartphone. But not exactly the way they are, but somehow behaves and functions like them. All of them store data or information for a short period of time, and get erased after some time. Computer or phone RAM gets erased as soon as you turn them off. Human beings have no such turn off button. Though sleep is somehow analogous to the process but still with lots of differences.

We are always inputting something or other from our external surroundings. Students keep learning something or other every day or perhaps every hour. All these directly do not go to the permanent memory. Instead they remain stored in the temporary memory. Varying with time and importance of the stored information, it goes to the permanent memory or else gets automatically erased from the temporary memory also. This is why we often forget small things like where we keep the keys, and keep searching for them. 

Long term memory or sometimes also called permanent memory is the main and vital memory of human beings. This is where we store all our learnings and experiences for a long duration of time, usually through years and sometimes even through the whole lifetime. 

Without this memory, you would not have been able to learn the first language you learned when you were an infant. That would have resulted in almost failure in communication with all other human beings you connected throughout your life. Almost all your education you received throughout your school and college days would also have been utterly impossible. You could not even learn another language. And so on. 

You can imagine the situation it would have been. Even there were chances that you would have forgotten your close relatives including even your parents. Because it is this memory which makes us recognize our parents even after our biologically instinctive recognition system fades away at our early infant ages. Other animal species lack this level of long term memory, but we are endowed with it for higher purposes. 

After a lot of research, still we are far from having something like a SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) of our memory functions. But we do have some ideas on how it can be working at least in many cases. 

It has been found that learning and memory functions are divided into 3 basic functions – 

1. Acquisition
2. Consolidation
3. Recall

When we expose ourselves to new sources of information, experiences or knowledge, for the purpose of respective acquisition, which we like to call as to educate ourselves or gain some education from that respective source. This process of acquisition of new information and knowledge in our memory is known as learning. 

After successful acquisition of information or knowledge, then comes the question of preserving them somewhere from where we can recall and use it anytime. This function is known as consolidation. This process includes the temporary acquisition at the short term memory and then gradual transfer into the long term memory for more permanent storage. Thus in consolidation stage the memory of the acquisition stage gets stable and permanent.

The third or last function is known as recall. As you can already understand this function enables the access and utilization of stored memories. Whenever we are trying to remember something then  

Sleep definitely helps in all our brain functions, including our memory functions. Not too much is known about sleep and memory till now, still the connection and dependency of our memory with sleep are beyond doubt or controversy. 

Memory means new connections, between more than one nerves and often more than thousands and even millions of nerves. As new memory forms, new nerve connections also form. This process of nerve connection development is an extremely energy consuming activity of our brain, which also requires enough nutritional backup, like proteins and vitamins. This is one important reason why students would need more and more nutritious foods and care during their school and college days. 

Despite enough nutrition, there can be great trouble with the memory as many people often suffer and complain. Knowingly or unknowingly, many people suffer from memory deficiency, so much that low memory is becoming a new standard trend of humans throughout the world. Day by day the memory functions of human beings are sharply decreasing. There are multiple reasons and factors, but sleep is one of the most important factors.

If we can somehow measure the quantitative and qualitative indices of human sleep, then we can easily notice that in both ways our sleep is deteriorating day by day. Again there are multiple reasons for this also. Thus we can see there is a sharp deterioration in both sleep and memory of human beings with passing time. And this is extremely alarming for the whole of mankind and its future. 

Deprivation or scarcity of enough quantity of high quality sleep can disturb or adversely affect our memory in numerous ways. The two most prominent are what we can see in the above Figure 2. 

Attention deficiency is one of the major barriers for students of this 21st century. There are many social and personal reasons that are contributing to this increase of attention deficiency. And sleep problems or deprivation is one of the most important reasons. Low levels of attention is famous to be one of the main reasons for students’ failure in learning, information collection and processing as well as knowledge creation or acquisition. 

For better learning and better memory retention, you need to have a high degree of focus on what you are studying. There are multiple sources of high quality focus, like the interest in the topic or subject, the motivation and inspiration factors, the purpose of the study or learning endeavor, and so on. And sleep is also one of the most important factors, it is a kind of biological compulsion. And psychological as well but in a subtler way than biological. 

Without enough sleep or proper sleep, the mind will remain fatigued, the nerves and synapses will remain fatigued, resulting in more missed triggers or delayed triggers, the whole cognitive functions will remain stressed and fatigued. Thus these are enough reasons for very poor performance of the mind for the purpose of learning and memory. There can be even more reasons, as I already said above, that the functions of mind and memory are not yet properly understood by us, but we obviously have a few high probability guesses. 

This was about the lack of focus and attention. Even more problems are there in the sectors of consolidation of memory for a sleep deprived brain. Let us see how it is.

So we can see that memory is all about nerve connections. With every piece of stuff you need to remember, you make new nerve connections. Sometimes you change connections but anyway you create a new connection design or a new map in the brain. This is a basic explanation about how memory works, though the subject is so deep that we will need more than one book to discuss it all and despite that we are still to find the actual process and properties of our memory. 

Let us get back to our specific issue of discussion. Why should we or a student need to sleep more for better memory and better learning?

We know that our body enters into the reconstruction and growth state when we are asleep. That means, all the repair work, all the scheduled as well as sudden maintenance works, and all the growth process happens mainly when we are asleep. Just above we were talking about the development of nerve connections. Well that’s a sort of growth only. Growing and modifying new nerve connections and helping growth of brain and other cognitive functions are among the best examples of growth. 

Thus just like the case of all other growth processes, these growth of new nerve connections and designs are particularly backed up by our sleep mechanisms. Any development of the brain and relevant resources takes too much of resources, and most of that happens when we are asleep and the rest of our body is at rest. Then the resources of the body can be more dedicatedly used for the growth and development of the body including the brain.

Thus contrary to most common beliefs, that memory is all about reading again and again, and concentration is not exactly that. It is true that reading and revising helps in memory, but that is just one part of the whole process. 

Reading or other kinds of sensory inputs usually register its associated information in the temporary memory. It cannot directly access the permanent memory. Actually almost every reading is a sort of cramming at the first step. This is the well known technique students use for exam and class syllabus related preparations. If it ends there then that will be known as cramming instead of learning. 

Thus the first step of learning involves cramming to a considerable extent. But the total of it is much much more than cramming. And in the process of learning from cramming comes the vital task of putting the content of temporary memory to the permanent memory. This is quite a complex process and this is where sleep helps us. As a rule of thumb, every act of cramming should be associated with good revision, good nutrition and even better sleep for quality learning output.

As memory will grow, with sleep and food and with proper studies, in the same track, learning will grow to eventually give rise to knowledge, with time and experience. 

This is also an equally vital question for any student, teacher or anybody. Just as because sleep is good for the brain and memory, one should not keep sleeping more than he really needs. 

The need for sleep varies from person to person depending on many factors. One of the most important factors is the growth factor. Any growing body and mind will need more sleep. Everyone of us do not have the same growth period and rate. Some growth periods are common, like early childhood and school days. We all grow at that time, both in body and brain. Continuous learning at schools, including the regular growth of the body, needs much more sleep. 

At older ages also, if our work or choice of lifestyle keep inducing growth in us, then obviously sleep will be needed at much higher quantities as well as quantity. Then only the process of growth can be properly backed up. Though growing at older ages is usually a very uncommon occurrence. 

But students are at the core of the growth period, and hence sleep is a more relevant and critical issue for this period. Both the growth of their body as well as their mind and brain will create a huge requirement for all associated resources including sleep.

Still sleep should not be too much, but not too less either. It is said that ideally we sleep one third of our life. What does that mean? 

Our one day is made up of 24 hours. If we sleep for 8 hours then that makes one third of the day. Thus extrapolating this to all such days we are supposed to spend on this planet, we can say that we sleep for one third of our life. 

Thus 8 hours is the usual standard. But in real life we can find people who sleep much more than that, as well as we can find people who can do with less sleep. It is said that Einstein used to sleep quite long hours like 10 to 12. It should not be taken as the general standard though, still perhaps he needed that amount of sleep to complete his research and discoveries. 

The best duration for sleep for a student and also the teacher as well as the parents, is something between 6 hours to 8 hours. Anything below 6 hours can significantly affect the performance of memory and brain in an adverse way. At the upper end, 8 hours is one good standard, but sometimes it can even scale up to 10 hours in some cases. Especially where the student is engaged both in studies and sports, such that he has a very high rate of both physical as well as mental growth. 

But to summarize, a student and all brain workers includings the teacher should be sleeping at least 6 hours a day and usually best if it is 8 hours a day.