The night before a big test or presentation is always the worst.
You want to stay up and cram information, you want to make sure that your brain can absorb just a little bit extra before bed.
However, you may be risking your brain’s ability to remember, period.
A scientific study shows the importance of sleep to memory:
Researchers have shown for the first time that sleep after learning nurtures the growth of dendritic spines. These are the tiny protrusions from brain cells which connect to other brain cells and facilitate the passage of information across synapses, which are the junctions at which brain cells meet.
Even on memorization tests, you still have to be able to make connections between material. Presentations and speeches are especially complex and require your brain to perform multiple tasks. When you deprive your brain of sleep, you’re actually hurting yourself—by making it more difficult for your brain to make important connections.
The NYU study’s author, Wen-Biao Gan, PhD, emphasizes how we finally have a better understanding about the importance of sleep to memory.
that’s the idea