Abstract
In the last decade advances in human neuroscience have identified the critical importance of time in creating long-term memories. Circadian neuroscience has established biological time functions via cellular clocks regulated by photosensitive retinal ganglion cells and the suprachiasmatic nuclei. Individuals have different circadian clocks depending on their chronotypes that vary with genetic, age, and sex. In contrast, social time is determined by time zones, daylight savings time, and education and employment hours. Social time and circadian time differences can lead to circadian desynchronization, sleep deprivation, health problems, and poor cognitive performance. Synchronizing social time to circadian biology leads to better health and learning, as demonstrated in adolescent education. In-day making memories of complex bodies of structured information in education is organized in social time and uses many different learning techniques. Research in the neuroscience of long-term memory (LTM) has demonstrated in-day time spaced learning patterns of three repetitions of information separated by two rest periods are effective in making memories in mammals and humans. This time pattern is based on the intracellular processes required in synaptic plasticity. Circadian desynchronization, sleep deprivation, and memory consolidation in sleep are less well-understood, though there has been considerable progress in neuroscience research in the last decade. The interplay of circadian, in-day and sleep neuroscience research are creating an understanding of making memories in the first 24-h that has already led to interventions that can improve health and learning.
Highlights
In the last decade advances in human neuroscience have identified the critical importance of time in creating long-term memories
Social time in UTC can be different than Geophysical Biological Time (GBT), and start times for school and work tend to be early in most societies, and this will disadvantage evening chronotypes
Sleep deprivation can have a negative impact on learning and memory processes, decreasing the ability to encode new memories though long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term memory (LTM) processes, and may disrupt consolidation in sleep
Summary
Like most life on earth, our physiology, health and behaviors have 24-h rhythms that follow the increasing and decreasing light levels throughout the day and night. Sleep deprivation is clearly associated with poorer cognitive processes (Pilcher and Huffcutt, 1966; Thomas et al, 2000; Van Dongen et al, 2003), and studies have found poor communication, decreased concentration and cognitive performance, unintended sleeps, decreased motor performance, increased risk taking and changes in mood pattern, depression (Foster and Wulff, 2005: Kelley et al, 2015) These factors directly or indirectly impact negatively on learning and memory processes (Curcio et al, 2006: Diekelmann and Born, 2010; Escribano et al, 2012). Moving starting times later than 08:30 does not clarify what wake time is optimal for adolescents of different ages This issue was addressed by our research team, growing out of our work with Oxford University’s Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute. It was becoming clear that desynchrony between circadian and social timing can affect different ages and chronotypes in different ways
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