Most of us struggle to think well after a poor night’s sleep – feeling foggy and failing to perform at our usual standard at school, university or work. You may notice that you’re not concentrating as well, or that your memory doesn’t seem up to scratch. Decades of bad sleep, however, may potentially lead to cognitive decline.
So how much sleep does our brain need to operate properly in the long term? Our new research study, published in Nature Aging, provides an answer.
We found that both insufficient and excessive sleep contributed to impaired cognitive performance of a middle-aged to old population of nearly 500,000 adults from the UK BioBank. However, we did not study children and adolescents, and since their brains are in development, they may have a different requirement for optimal sleep duration.
Related on the SLP
Our key finding was that seven hours of sleep per night was optimal, with more or less than that bringing fewer benefits for cognition and mental health. In fact, we found that people who slept that amount performed – on average – better on cognitive tests (including on processing speed, visual attention and memory) than those who slept less or more.
This is an excerpt. Read the original post here
