If you’ve had a rough night’s sleep recently, you may think to yourself ‘well, I’ll simply catch up on those missed hours of rest at the weekend’.
Unfortunately new research has revealed that actually this is a complete myth and that one night of restlessness can affect your attention, memory and cognition for – wait for it – a whole week.
The long-term study focused on one person’s brain and behaviour for five months using scans
As part of a unusual, long-term study, scientists tracked one person’s brain and behaviour for 19 whole weeks. The participant, first author of the study, Ana María Triana of Aalto University, Finland wore devices throughout the timeframe to track her activities and physiological markers and had routine scans to see how well her memory and cognition were working.
The results?
From the data gathered and published it would appear that our brains’ responses have two clear patterns – a response that could last around a week or a longer term wave of up to 15 days of gradual effects.
Things like focus after a bad night’s sleep fell under the shorter term response, while factors such as memory and attention were impacted for longer.
“We find traces of past behaviour and physiology in brain connectivity that extend up as far as 15 days,” the authors of the study, published in the journal Plos Biology, reported.
“Every day, we wake up as a slightly different person, as our mental states are influenced by many external factors,” they added.
“The quality of sleep, the level of physical activity, and the nature of our social interactions all affect the state of our brains at different timescales.
“Our findings suggest that behavioural, physiological and lifestyle factors correlate with brain connectivity across different timescales, in both the short term – less than seven days – and longer term, up to two weeks.”
The good news however is that physical activity was also found to positively affect brain region interaction and even slight changes in both mood and heart rate left lasting impressions for up to 15 whole days.
And with that, we’re off to bed.