Sleep is essential for brain function and learning. While asleep, the brain is highly active and consolidating memories. Lack of sleep impairs attention, executive function, working memory, mood, and other cognitive skills. Short naps can boost performance and reduce accidents caused by drowsiness. Long-term stress also damages cognition by impairing memory, executive function, motor skills, immune response, and sleep. It can lead to learned helplessness where people feel unable to escape or change their situation and give up. Managing stress through health, sleep, diet and relaxation techniques is important for both home and work performance.

1. Brain Rules
Sleep & Stress
By Ethel Fimbres
efimbres14@apu.edu
September 2015

2. Sleep

3. Sleep Well, Think Well
★ When we’re asleep, the brain is not resting at all.
★ It is almost unbelievably active!
★ It’s possible that the reason we need to sleep is so that we can learn.

4. Why Sleep?
I’d Rather Stay Up All Night.
★ Sleep must be important because we spend 1/3 of our lives doing it!
★ Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood,
quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.
★ We still don’t know how much we need! It changes with age, gender,
pregnancy, puberty, and so much more.

5. Sleep Loss = Brain Drain
Sleep loss hurts attention, function, memory, mood,
quantitative skills, logic and general math knowledge,
etc, etc, etc….

6. There’s more…..
★ Healthy 30 year old sleep deprived bodies revert to that of a 60 year old!
★ Sleep deprivation causes the body to not fully utilize the food we eat by 1/3!
★ A healthy night’s sleep can boost learning significantly!
★ Sleep can be a great friend!

7. The Brain is Active
while we Sleep
Neurons, hormones &
other chemicals keep us up
Brain cells, hormones &
various chemicals put us down
It's a battle where one eventually becomes
exhausted & falls asleep.

8. Ahhh….the Joys of Napping!
★ Napping is normal. Ever feel tired in the afternoon? That’s because your
brain really wants to take a nap.
★ Around 3 p.m., 12 hours after the midpoint of your sleep, all your brain wants
to do is nap.
★ Taking a nap might make you more productive. In one study, a 26-minute
nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.
★ Don’t schedule important meetings at 3 p.m. It just doesn’t make sense.

9. Lyndon Johnson, 36th US
President regularly closed his
door mid-afternoon & put on his
pajamas for a 30 min nap.

10. Bad Things Happen When we Don’t Nap!
Facts:
★ More traffic accidents happen during nap zone
★ Nappers saw a 16% improvement in reaction time
★ Naps boost cognitive performance
★ Napping 30 mins before pulling an all nighter keeps our minds sharp

11. Wake up Before
your Alarm?
● An automatic device exists!
● The body has a series of
internal clocks controlled by
the brain.
● It's called the suprachiasmatic.

12. Stress

13. Stressed Brains Don’t
Learn the Same Way
★ What is stress? It depends...
★ Certain types of stress HURT learning but some types BOOST
learning!
★ Some types of stress are good for the brain -- you've heard those
stories of grandma’s lifting up cars to rescue children.
★ Long-term stress is bad. The brain is designed to handle stress that
lasts seconds, not years.

14. Learned Helplessness...
...happens when people or animals become conditioned to
believe that a situation is unchangeable or inescapable.

15. Learned Helplessness
The Misconception:
If you are in a bad situation,
you will do whatever you
can do to escape it.
The Truth:
If you feel like you aren’t
in control of your destiny,
you will give up and
accept whatever
situation you are in.
VS

16. All Three = Stress
#1 Measureable
Physiological Response
#2 Desire to Avoid the
Situation
#3 Loss of Control
Researchers Jeansok Kim & David Diamond

17. There’s more…..
★ Stress damages virtually every kind of cognition that exists
★ It damages memory & executive function
★ It can hurt your motor skills
★ Over a long period of time it disrupts your immune response
★ You get sicker more often
★ It disrupts your ability to sleep
★ You get depressed

18. Ahhh….the Stress of Work & Home!
★ The emotional stability of the home is the greatest predictor of
academic success. If you want your kid to get into Harvard, go home
and love your spouse.
★ You have one brain. The same brain you have at home is the same
brain you have at work/school.
★ The stress you are experiencing at home will affect your
performance at work.

19. According to Harvard Business Review
Executives deal with stress in 4 ways:
★ Health (including exercise)
★ Sleep
★ Diet
★ Removal
**Removal is anything that whisks you away from work’s struggles.
Renewal = Removal

20. References
About.com (2015). What is learned helplessness. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/lindex/f/earned-helplessness.htm
Harvard Business Review (October 29, 2014). Why leaders don’t brag about successfully managing stress. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/10/why-
leaders-dont-brag-about-successfully-managing-stress/
Lyndon B. Johnson [image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/lyndon-b-johnson
Medina, J.(2014). Brain rules: 12 rules for surviving and thriving at work, home and school. Seattle, WA: Pear Press.
Stressed is Dessert [Image]. (2013). Retrieved from https://acuriouswanderer.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/grad-school-stress/
Sleeping Moon [image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://smudgem.blogspot.com/2014/03/koreas-war-on-sleep.html
Stressed Student [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://contextualfeed.com/stress-and-its-impact-on-ones-creativity-288.html
You Are Not So Smart (November 11, 2009). Learned Helplessness. Retrieved from http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/learned-helplessness/