Rebecca Zook - Math Tutoring Online

From one of my favorite magazines, The Week:

A good night’s sleep and even a nice nap can boost your brain’s ability to remember and learn new information. But dreams can help even more, a new study suggests. For the Harvard study, 100 volunteers were asked to take a test on a computer that involved finding their way around a maze. After a five-hour break, they took the test again.

In any event, “If you’re studying something tough, get the basics down and take a nap,” says sleep researcher Michael Breus. “If you dream about it, you will probably understand it better.”

Yay! More scientific evidence in support of naps and healthy sleeping! I’ve always thought that falling asleep with visions of equations dancing in my head was a sign that I was maybe doing a little too much math. But maybe it’s just a way to prime my brain to dream about the problems I need to solve!

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Need to focus? Take a nap! From my favorite magazine, The Week:

The restorative power of naps

The results suggest that sleep “reboots” the brain, helping to clear its short-term memory and shuttle key information into longer-term storage. “It’s as though the e-mail inbox is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more mail,” says study author Matthew Walker. After napping, he says, you’re “ready to soak up new information.”

My favorite quote from the longer National Geographic News article: “When you have a problem, no one says you should ‘stay awake on it,'” he [researcher Matthew Walker] quipped.

We seem to accept that kids benefit from naps. But adult napping, especially in the workplace, is not encouraged, even though it helps adults learn better and get more stuff done.

I frequently use naps as a way to re-set and refresh my brain, and I’m glad to see this phenomenon being explored and recognized by the scientific community! Maybe this research will be a small step towards a more pro-nap culture.

(Photo courtesy of Mills Lawn School.)

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When I had to choose a “health problem” to do a presentation on in high school, I chose Sleep Deprivation as my topic. In middle school and high school, I struggled almost every night with falling asleep, and during the school year I would battle with my Mom about getting out of bed on time almost every morning.

But in college, I somehow stumbled on a midnight to 8 am sleep schedule that worked amazingly. I could fall asleep almost every night and frequently woke up right before my alarm. I was notorious for the regularity of my sleep schedule, which my friends called “Zook Time.”

But going to grad school really jacked up my sleep schedule. There were a few months in there were I really didn’t sleep more than 2-4 hours a night, and it wasn’t because I didn’t try! Now that I’ve finished grad school, I’m trying to regain my formerly excellent healthy sleeping powers.

I stumbled across this great article on tips for how to get kids to sleep more (or how to help yourself sleep more) by Ashley Merryman. What surprised me most of all in the article was learning that as many as 25% of people with ADHD have an underlying sleep disorder, and that addressing the sleep disorder would make their ADHD completely disappear.

I can attest that these tips work. I’ve been turning down the temperature in my apartment before going to bed. I’ve also been using low light before bedtime and not using the computer for two hours before bed. I started using the stove hood light in my kitchen instead of the overhead track lighting, a little table lamp in my living area instead of three big floor lamps, and my bedside lamp instead of my overhead light. I even put a little lamp in my bathroom so I can have low light when I brush my teeth before bed!

I know that many students struggle with sleep and wakefulness, so I’m excited to pass these tips on to everyone.

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Mickey Hart eloquently describes rhythmic entrainment in his book Drumming at the Edge of Magic. If you put a kid with no drumming experience in a group of people all playing at the same tempo, eventually the kid will “entrain” and start playing in rhythm with everyone else, without even thinking about it. It is inevitable—and it’s just a question of time before it happens, because as humans, we entrain to each other’s sound waves.

But did you know that the human brain also entrains when exposed to brain waves?!

Brain wave entrainment, aka “Binaural Beats,” works by playing one frequency into one ear and a slightly different frequency into the other ear. The difference between the frequencies creates a third wave—in this case, inside your skull—that you can only hear using headphones. In these tracks, the frequencies of the two waves going into each ear are calculated to produce a third sound wave that is the same frequency as a certain brain wave.

Since different states of consciousness are associated with different brain waves, you can trigger the state of consciousness you want by immersing your brain in the sound wave that matches the brain wave!

For example, you can use delta waves to trigger sleep, or beta/gamma waves to trigger focus for studying. Theta waves trigger meditative states, and alpha waves induce relaxation. You can even learn to design your own brainwave tracks!

Healingbeats.com offers free downloads of binaural beats. I’ve used the delta wave track to help me sleep. I’ve also used the “study” track.

My experiences have varied—the more receptive and relaxed I’m feeling, the easier it seems to be let the tracks to shift my consciousness. Sometimes it takes a while, but sometimes, with the sleep track, the effects were so rapid I was almost scared! (“Did someone drug me?”)

Thanks again to my awesome brother for telling me about this great site! And thank you healingbeats.com for many hours of sleep I otherwise would never have experienced!

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Many of my friends are trying to become healthier sleepers, and I am too. One of the biggest things that prevents us from being able to sleep is, of course, light! In her excellent New York Magazine article about sleep, Ashley Merryman points out that “the light from a television or computer can delay both the necessary drop in core body temperature and melatonin production—and thus delaying sleep onset—by two hours.”

Wo! Dim the lights and shut the laptop! No wonder I’ve been having trouble sleeping!

So…what part of my body is keeping track of how much light I’m exposed to? It’s… my pineal gland! Check out this great description from Anodea Judith’s book Wheels of Life:

…the pineal gland [is] a tiny (10 x 6 mm) cone-shaped gland located in the geometric center of the head at approximately eye level. It is possible that this gland was, at one time, located nearer to the top of the head. In some species of reptiles it still is, forming a kind of light-sensitive perceptual organ, resembling another eye.

The pineal gland… acts as a light meter for the body, translating variations in light to hormonal messages relayed to the body through the autonomic nervous system. Over 100 body functions have daily rhythms which are influenced by exposure to light. […] Embryologically, the pineal gland is derived from a third eye that begins to develop early in the embryo and later degenerates. The pineal has some tranquilizing effect on the nervous system and the removal of the pineal can predispose an animal to seizures.

Aiiiiii!!! So there’s actually a physical version of the spiritual third eye? That is SO COOL!!!

Now I want to start working with my little pineal gland instead of against it.

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Here’s a thought-provoking article about kids and sleep from one of my favorite writers, Po Bronson.

Compared to 30 years ago, most kids get about an hour less sleep per night. Shocking fact: losing just this one hour of sleep causes kids to function cognitively as if they are two years younger. Adults are affected too. After 2 weeks of getting only 6 hours of sleep per night, adults act “just as impaired as someone who has stayed awake for 24 hours straight.”

My favorite bitlet:

Sleep is a biological imperative for every species on Earth. But humans alone try to resist its pull. Instead, we see sleep not as a physical need but a statement of character. It’s considered a sign of weakness to admit fatigue, and it’s a sign of strength to refuse to succumb to slumber. Sleep is for wusses.

(Bronson and his collaborator, Ashley Merryman, also discuss this same research in their recent book NurtureShock, which I highly recommend–it’s totally amazing.)

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