Background Research

I began my background research on google.com. I used the search engine and typed in relationship between grade point average and sleep. I found one website that was relevant to the study. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCR/is_1_35/ai_74221510/

A study of 148 undergraduate students was conducted in which their ages range from 18 to 42. They were given questionnaires that asked them their average sleep length for a 24 hour day and what their overall college grade point average was. The mean of long sleepers was 3.24, the mean of short sleepers was 2.73 and the mean of average sleepers was 3.01. This data helped support their hypothesis that long term sleepers would report higher grade point averages than short sleepers.

I also used the google search engine to find more websites that would be relevant to my study. I found one website that was very applicable to the relationship between sleep and grade point average.http://www.augustanamirror.com/variety/amount-of-sleep-affects-grades-productivity-health-of-students-1.2118746 The University of North Texas conducted an observational study to find a relationship between sleep hours and average grade point average. They observed two students and found that student 1 is an early bird who gets about 7 to 8 hours of sleep. Student 2 was a night owl who got about less than 5 to 6 hours each night. Student 1 who got 7 to 8 hours of sleep had a 3.5 grade point average while the other student who got about 5 to 6 hours of sleep had a grade point average of 2.5.

Using the google search engine I searched amount of sleep and grade point average. I found another observational study that was conducted to find a relationship between grade point average and sleep.

http://media.www.dailyhelmsman.com/media/storage/paper875/news/2008/09/03/OtherStories/Sleep.
Is.Essential.To.Success.Linked.To.Higher.Gpa-3412918.shtml

Pamela Thatcher, an assistant professor at St. Lawrence University studied 120 students to compare their amount of sleep and their grades. The students studied attended the liberal arts college in New York. Pamela Thatcher found that sixty percent of the students surveyed said that they have pulled all nighters while the remaining forty percent did not. The sixty percent who did had lower grade point averages than those who have not pulled all nighters.

I also used the google search engine and typed in keywords “lack of sleep on the brain” to find out if sleep affects thinking abilities. I found many websites that were relevant to this question but very few websites had experiments done to prove it. For example, the website http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1690 said that since the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex of the brain deals with language, it is active during learning tests. It claimed that there is no activity in the temporal lobe of the brain in sleep deprived people. The reason why sleep deprived people can still perform well on tests is because other parts of the brain come to action to make up for the loss of the temporal lobe activity. The frontal lobe is also greatly affected by sleep deprivation. The website claimed that without enough sleep, humans begin to slur their speech, speak in a monotone voice, and stutter more. It also claimed that their speed and efficiency to complete a task may decrease. Humans have REM sleep which activates the areas of the brain for learning and memory. The website said that when a person is taught something new, they cannot improve on it until they receive at least eight hours of sleep so without enough sleep they cannot maintain as much information.

Using the same keywords in google, I found a website that did provide an experiment conducted to prove that lack of sleep does affect the brain functions. I found that lack of sleep has a relationship with the brain because the brain turns on and off constantly throughout the day. The website I found was http://news.health.ufl.edu/2008/8363/multimedia/health-in-a-heartbeat/lack-of-sleep-can-cause-brain-%E2%80%98shutdown%E2%80%99/

The University of Pennsylvania studied a number of people who had a short rested night. They used a brain scan to view their brain and found that certain parts of the brain were turning off while they were working when they were tired. They studied those same people on a well rested night and found no shut downs in the brain.