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Sleep Improves Physical Performance
BOSTON, Feb 19, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) --
A good night's sleep after a day's practice can improve performance on physical tasks by as much as 20 percent, a Harvard Medical School researcher said Tuesday.
It is the first time it has been shown sleep improves physical performance, although similar results have been seen for mental tasks, neuroscientist Robert Stickgold told the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"Just sleeping seems to give a 20 percent improvement on motor tasks," he said.
Stickgold said the finding will come as no surprise to people who have had the experience of trying to learn a new tennis serve or dance step, given up in frustration, only to find themselves able to perform the task easily after a good night's sleep.
But, he said, the new study is the first to show an "absolute improvement" in performance.
He added athletes have long assumed a night's sleep before training is important, but have neglected sleep after a day's workout. "They may have it exactly wrong," he said.
Neuroscientist Matt Wilson of MIT said Stickgold's work supports a "common thread" of sleep research -- that the mind "tries to improve its ability to guide behavior" during sleep. He said it's still not clear how this "general rehearsal effect" takes place.
In Stickgold's experiments, test subjects were asked to learn to type a simple sequence of numbers and their speed was recorded. They practiced for 30 seconds and rested for 30 seconds during a total of 12 trials.
At the beginning, he said, all the subjects improved sharply, but then their gains in speed tailed off.
If subjects stayed awake and were tested every few hours, they showed a gain in speed of only a few percentage points, he said. But if subjects were allowed to sleep and then re-tested in the morning, they showed a 20 percent gain in speed.
"There has been lots of anecdotal data that this is true," Stickgold said, "but here's hard data."
The gain in performance seems to be linked to what's called Type II sleep -- light sleep between periods of Rapid Eye Movement sleep in which there is intense dreaming, Stickgold said. Type II sleep usually occurs in the fourth quarter of the night's sleep, he said, and if it is interrupted, the 20 percent gain no longer occurs.
Sleep Improves Physical Performance
BOSTON, Feb 19, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) --
A good night's sleep after a day's practice can improve performance on physical tasks by as much as 20 percent, a Harvard Medical School researcher said Tuesday.
It is the first time it has been shown sleep improves physical performance, although similar results have been seen for mental tasks, neuroscientist Robert Stickgold told the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"Just sleeping seems to give a 20 percent improvement on motor tasks," he said.
Stickgold said the finding will come as no surprise to people who have had the experience of trying to learn a new tennis serve or dance step, given up in frustration, only to find themselves able to perform the task easily after a good night's sleep.
But, he said, the new study is the first to show an "absolute improvement" in performance.
He added athletes have long assumed a night's sleep before training is important, but have neglected sleep after a day's workout. "They may have it exactly wrong," he said.
Neuroscientist Matt Wilson of MIT said Stickgold's work supports a "common thread" of sleep research -- that the mind "tries to improve its ability to guide behavior" during sleep. He said it's still not clear how this "general rehearsal effect" takes place.
In Stickgold's experiments, test subjects were asked to learn to type a simple sequence of numbers and their speed was recorded. They practiced for 30 seconds and rested for 30 seconds during a total of 12 trials.
At the beginning, he said, all the subjects improved sharply, but then their gains in speed tailed off.
If subjects stayed awake and were tested every few hours, they showed a gain in speed of only a few percentage points, he said. But if subjects were allowed to sleep and then re-tested in the morning, they showed a 20 percent gain in speed.
"There has been lots of anecdotal data that this is true," Stickgold said, "but here's hard data."
The gain in performance seems to be linked to what's called Type II sleep -- light sleep between periods of Rapid Eye Movement sleep in which there is intense dreaming, Stickgold said. Type II sleep usually occurs in the fourth quarter of the night's sleep, he said, and if it is interrupted, the 20 percent gain no longer occurs.
