Week 2: How Sleep Shapes Academic Success

I want to welcome you back to my blog. I hope you enjoyed my week 1 blog. To recap, last week I began reading my course texts, focusing on the association between sleep deprivation and memory consolidation. I began to understand the structures of the brain and neural processes that facilitate memory consolidation and are directly impacted by sleep deprivation.

This week, I continued reading my course texts, with a specific goal to understand the biological processes and social factors connecting impaired memory consolidation to academic performance. Hence, this week’s research will close the loop, completing the multi-step link connecting memory consolidation to academic outcomes and potential solutions, in particular, the effectiveness of recovery sleep. 

This week key I read “Impact of multi-night experimentally induced short sleep on adolescent performance in a simulated classroom,” by Dean Beebe (2017), “Free recall of word lists under total sleep deprivation and after recovery sleep,” by Gislaine de Almeida (2012), “The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents,” by Julia Dewald (2010), “The relationship of sleep hours on the academic performance and classroom participation of senior high school students,”  by Ghian Garcia (2023), “A multi-step pathway connecting short sleep duration to daytime somnolence, reduced attention, and poor academic performance: an exploratory cross-sectional study in teenagers,”  by Santiago Perez-Lloret (2013), and “Sleep duration and subject-specific academic performance among adolescents in China,” by Maohua Wang (2025). The full list of course texts I read this week is linked in the reference section of this post. 

To summarize my key findings this week, sleep strengthens long-term memory through temporary storage in the hippocampus before being transferred to the neocortex for long-term storage (Born & Wilhelm, 2012). Interestingly, not all memories are treated equally; your brain prioritizes encoding information that is important for future goals (Born & Wilhelm, 2012). Some notable statistics are that 45% of adolescents get less than 8 hours of sleep, and nearly 40% get less than 7 hours (Dewald et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2025). Furthermore, sleep-deprived students are twice as likely to fail compared to adequately rested students (Perez-Lloret et al., 2013). Current research on subject-specific sensitivities to sleep deprivation suggests that math and science performance may decline more significantly due to high-level reasoning and problem-solving requirements (Wang et al., 2025). Another key aspect of my project involves investigating the relationship between recovery sleep and academic performance. The current literature has produced mixed results, with some studies arguing that it can enhance memory, while other experts suggest irregular sleep patterns due to longer weekend sleep duration are associated with lower academic outcomes (Cunningham et al., 2025).

In week 3, I will begin developing my survey, which will serve as my main method of data collection. I plan to collect data from college students (ages 18-20), assessing subject-specific sleep duration, sleep habits, sleep consistency, weekend sleep recovery, and academic recall in STEM and Humanities courses. In week 3, I will also begin conducting secondary data analysis on datasets involving academic recall tasks, including quizzes and memory assessments, to compare recall ability across subjects. I will be looking into the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, National Sleep Research Resource (NSRR), and ANPHY Sleep Database, among others, to supplement survey responses. I hope to see you return to my blog in week 3! 

References: 

Beebe, D. W., Field, J., Miller, L. E., & LeBlond, E. (2017). Impact of multi-night experimentally induced short sleep on adolescent performance in a simulated classroom. Sleep, 40(2), zsw035. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsw035 

Born, J., & Wilhelm, I. (2012). System consolidation of memory during sleep. Psychological research, 76(2), 192-203. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0335-6 

Cunningham, T., Denis, D., Bottary, R., Kensinger, E., Zeng, S., & Stickgold, R. (2024). 0052 Recovery Nap After Total Sleep Deprivation Restores Emotional Memory Performance to Typically-Rested Levels. Sleep, 47(Supplement_1), A24-A24. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsae067.0052 

de Almeida Valverde Zanini, G., Tufik, S., Andersen, M. L., da Silva, R. C. M., Bueno, O. F. A., Rodrigues, C. C., & Pompeia, S. (2012). Free recall of word lists under total sleep deprivation and after recovery sleep. Sleep, 35(2), 223-230. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.1626 

Dewald, J. F., Meijer, A. M., Oort, F. J., Kerkhof, G. A., & Bögels, S. M. (2010). The influence of sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness on school performance in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review. Sleep medicine reviews, 14(3), 179-189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2009.10.004 

Garcia, G. L., Recio, A. B., Ilagan, M., Escueta, H. G., Morales, Z. D., & Torres, N. (2023). The relationship of sleep hours on the academic performance and classroom participation of senior high school students. Edukasiana J Educ Innov, 2, 222-36. 10.56916/ejip.v2i3.409 

Leak, R. K., Weiner, S. L., Chandwani, M. N., & Rhodes, D. C. (2020). Long weekend sleep is linked to stronger academic performance in male but not female pharmacy students. Advances in physiology education, 44(3), 350-357. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00005.2020 

Lin, C. T., Liang, S. F., & Shaw, F. Z. (2025). Better sleep is associated with higher academic performance from an actigraphy-based analysis of sleep consistency and grades in college students. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-33775-0 

Perez-Lloret, S., Videla, A. J., Richaudeau, A., Vigo, D., Rossi, M., Cardinali, D. P., & Perez-Chada, D. (2013). A multi-step pathway connecting short sleep duration to daytime somnolence, reduced attention, and poor academic performance: an exploratory cross-sectional study in teenagers. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 9(5), 469-473.  https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.2668 

Seoane, H. A., Moschetto, L., Orliacq, F., Orliacq, J., Serrano, E., Cazenave, M. I., … & Perez-Lloret, S. (2020). Sleep disruption in medicine students and its relationship with impaired academic performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep medicine reviews, 53, 101333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2020.101333

Tantawy, A. O., Tallawy, H. N. E., Farghaly, H. R., Farghaly, W. M., & Hussein, A. S. (2013). Impact of nocturnal sleep deprivation on declarative memory retrieval in students at an orphanage: a psychoneuroradiological study. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 403-408. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S38905 

Wang, M., Chen, Z., Han, N., & Yao, H. (2025). Sleep duration and subject-specific academic performance among adolescents in China. npj Science of Learning, 10(1), 71. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-025-00361-y 

Waterhouse, J., Atkinson, G., Edwards, B., & Reilly, T. (2007). The role of a short post-lunch nap in improving cognitive, motor, and sprint performance in participants with partial sleep deprivation. Journal of sports sciences, 25(14), 1557-1566.  https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410701244983