Chem 201 Archive – Alan Shusterman

For years I have issued this advice to Chem 201 students before each exam, “Don’t stay up too late studying,” I say. “It doesn’t help. You need to get good sleep in order to make good long-term memories.” I have repeated this message over and over again not because I’m a “Mommy” who hates to see exhausted students working on o-chem exams (although I do hate to see this), but because my dim appreciation of sleep research has been that the science supports my advice.

So I was pretty excited when I saw an article in the 6 June 2014 issue of Science magazine that helps explain the relationship between sleep and memory. “Memories – getting wired during sleep” (p. 1087) reports how researchers have found a way (p. 1173) to observe changes in nerve fibers (in mice) that occur when the mice learn a new task. Specifically, the researchers examined the number and location of “dendritic spines.” These spines are structures that form in specific locations on a nerve fiber as a mouse improves its ability to perform particular tasks. Sleep promotes the formation of spines (and also improved task performance) while sleep deprivation prevented spines from forming (and also reduced task performance).

Neurophysiology is not my field, but these results are really exciting. Imagine being able to see structural changes in individual nerves that are associated with learning! And also discovering that sleep is essential for these changes to occur. Very, very cool.

And, of course, that advice of mine: if you really want a good score on the next exam, study. Then get to sleep. Good sleep.

Reed chemistry alum and medical school student, Hassan Ghani ’08, just sent me this story from yesterday’s NY Times, “How to get an A- in Organic Chemistry” by Barbara Moran. Like so many others, Ms. Moran has decided a mid-life career change is in order, but her search for professional fulfillment has taken an unusual tack: at the tender age of 42, and with parental responsibilities for two small children, she finds herself enrolled in organic chemistry so that she can become a doctor.

Her story about the joys of “orgo” includes observations on the necessity of mastering electron pushing (draw a “zillion” curved arrows and you will eventually develop the kind of “intuition” that makes a poorly placed arrow seem as unpleasant as “ketchup on sushi”), similarities in the type of reasoning (“inductive generalization”) used by organic chemists and doctors, and the all-important life lesson that, even though our life compass points towards the Land of Perfection, it is not a place that we can ever visit.