Sleep can be defined as an obligatory period of physical and mental relaxation, where consciousness, thought, and voluntary movements stop and sporadic dreaming occurs. No one knows why or how humans and other animals sleep, but it is certain that the type of sleep influences quality, quantity, and the effectiveness of wakeful mental and physical activities (Thompson 1). Daytime languor, due to sleep deprivation is a major complication for fifty percent of college students as compared to thirty six percent of adults. An expansive, sixty percent of students have reported being sleepy, dragging, and tired at a minimum of three days per week (Hershner 3). Inadequate sleep hygiene is the most common cause …show more content…
The most prevalent sleep disorder is insomnia, a disorder in which one is unable to fall asleep and/or stay asleep. There are three types of insomnia: Short-term, Primary, and Secondary. Short-term insomnia can be caused by a number of things, including jet lag, extreme temperature, stress, medication, and emotional or physical discomfort. The most common form of insomnia is primary insomnia, and is more common in women than men and increases with age. Secondary insomnia can be caused by mental disorders and can be the effect of medications. Treatments for insomnia can range from as little as a new nighttime routine to pharmaceutical treatments (NIH …show more content…
The four areas of working memory are the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, the episodic buffer, and the central executive. Verbal and musical information, also known as echo memory, is temporarily stored in the phonological loop. Iconic memory is kept in the visuospatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer comes into play when the brain is required to absorb information from multiple different sources. The central executive, for obvious reasons, controls all three subsystems. The brain 's frontal lobe controls both attention and working memory, along with the fact that the frontal lobe of the brain is influenced by sleep deprivation, it has been theorized that sleep deprivation impairs attention and working memory (Alhola 12). Long term memory is referred to as either declarative or non-declarative. Declarative memory and non-declarative memory have different capacities; declarative memory is very limited, whereas non-declarative memory has a capacity so large that it essentially has zero limits. Declarative memory is divided into two subsystems, semantic, or knowledge about the universe, and episodic, or information about one 's self. Non-declarative memory holds the information required for everyday tasks. When sleep deprived, memory is negatively affected (Alhola