WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, HAVE A NAP

By: Christine Ro

Published: BBC, 9 October 2018, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181009-how-sleep-helps-with-emotional-recovery-and-trauma

Level of Difficulty:** (This an easy Level **)

BEFORE YOU READ

·         The benefits of a good night’s sleep https://www.ted.com/talks/shai_marcu_the_benefits_of_a_good_night_s_sleep?language=en

·         How sleep affects memory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Rd--E2uZU

QUESTIONS

1.     Since napless children are notoriously bad tempered we can conclude that naps must be ….

2.    It has been proven that sleep is, in fact, invaluable because…

3.    We understand from the research mentioned in the text that the more……the ….. events are remembered

4.    The reason for the above is that these memories…

5.    What was the result of Bollinger’s experiment? What conclusion can be drawn from this experiment?

6.    What conclusion can be drawn from the portion of the experiment involving LPP?

7.    REM sleep helps people to become better at evaluating emotions due to the fact that….

8.    Without the prefrontal cortex to provide control, we would…

9.    Upsetting experiences turn up in dreams so that they…

10. Read the example taken from Spencer’s research. What was the result of the research?

11. What conclusion can be drawn from the experiment described above?

12.  Why are children and the elderly more in need of naps for emotional processing?

13.  The types of memories seem to vary throughout life for psychological reasons / for physical reasons / for practical reasons / for educational reasons.

14.  Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ0cMTX2KIU  How could sleep help people with this problem?

15.  How did experts come up with the idea of sleeplessness to help treat depression? Why does sleeplessness work?

16.  What is the reason for the advice given to people with a mutation of the BDNF gene?

WRITING TASK

Write a 100 to 150 word summary of the text.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, HAVE A NAP; KEY AND TEACHERS’ NOTES

This text has given me the opportunity to write certain types of questions, mainly those that require the student to draw conclusions, state reasons and results. I hope they find it useful.

1.   Doing something to process emotions

2.   It plays a key role in encoding information based on experiences from the day

3.   The amygdale is activated, the better

4.   These memories are  processed for longer and reiterated more than more trivial memories

5.    Children who slept were better able to control their emotional responses / Sleep is particularly good at transforming emotional memory

6.    Sleep helps with both crystallising emotional information – and with controlling how it makes us feel

7.    The stress hormone noradrenaline is absent during REM sleep

8.    We would not keep calm and would just react to things immediately

9.    Can be contextualized  against more settled memories and the sting can be removed

10. Kids are really emotional without naps, and they’re hypersensitive to emotional stimuli  (because they haven’t consolidated the emotional baggage from earlier that day).

11. The amount of SWS activity during sleep affects how emotional memories are transformed.

12.  Children have a less developed hippocampus and the elderly could have a similar degeneration of hippocampus storage with ageing

13. For practical reasons

14. It might help with reminding them that they’ve eliminated their fear

15.  The natural biological response following intense trauma is that we have insomnia / REM sleep deprivation harms the brain’s ability to consolidate emotional memories

16.  It would minimise the amount of REM sleep