A new study is able to provide a reason behind why after a night of poor sleep, we feel as though we are working harder to complete tasks.
The results are based on data collected from 25 people with insomnia and 25 people who were good sleepers; the average age of the participants was 32. The participants performed a working memory task while undergoing functional MRI brain scans.
The study suggests that people with insomnia have a reduced ability to engage some task-appropriate brain regions and reduced ability to modulate task-irrelevant brain regions during working memory performance. Specifically, people without insomnia are able pull more resources to the network of the brain responsible for working memory as the task grew in difficulty, while people with insomnia were unable to pull these resources.
Although you may be able to complete a memory task, your brain will not be efficient when you are sleep deprived. Increase your brain power by making sure you get the proper amount of sleep for your age group.
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