Brain Investigation 

By Simran Gill, Grace Mibach, Rizalina Thomas, and Kalia Miyasaki

Question: Does sleep affect your memory? 

 
“The RAS receives input from sensory nerves that come from nerve endings in your eyes, 
ears, mouth, face, skin, muscles, and internal organs . . . You will learn more successfully if you 
keep the RAS filter open to the flow of information you want to enter your prefrontal cortex 
[Thinking Brain].” (​What You Should Know About Your Brain, Judy Willis.​) 
 
This experiment affects the R. A. S. Gatekeeper, and in order to keep the ‘filter’ open, it 
helps to be physically healthy and well rested. 
 
Our test subjects will be a random selection of students who are willing and have flexible 
schedules in order to sleep at the selected time. Their names will be anonymous. 
 
So, our experiment alludes to the aspect of being well rested-- the first day, we’re going 
to teach a set of people random topics they all didn’t know very much about. Then, a select 
amount of people will get six hours of sleep, and the rest will get nine hours of sleep. The next 
day, we will quiz them about said topic, and see how much they remember, depending on the 
amount of hours they slept. 
 
Our hypothesis is that the people with more hours of sleep will remember more about the 
random subject. But, it may vary, depending on the individual's personal memory. 
 
-The Test Results- 
 
Our findings were that half the people, out of four, got 4/8 & 6/8. The other half, that got 
less sleep, got 2/8 & 7/8. Added up, the people with more sleep got a total of 10/16, while the 
people with less sleep got a total of 9/16. 
 
What we learned was that some people are better at memorizing things, and others are 
used to a certain amount of hours of sleep. Though not a big sample size, most of the people 
who got more sleep did better.  
 
What we would do next time, is get a bigger sample size for more precise results and 
variation, and to teach them ​one​ random topic. 
 
 
-Redesign- 
 
We decided to redesign our project to fulfill those wishes. For our redesigning, we have 
twice as much test subjects, and taught them about one topic. Half the test subjects got less 
sleep, the other half got more sleep. 
 
What we found was really far from what we thought. The results were the exact opposite 
from what we found last time. The people who got less sleep had a total of 15/20 in total, and the 
people who got more sleep got 9/20 in total on the quiz. 
 
The results for both sets of results were opposite, which was obtained by expanding the 
sample size. We think ethic to remember the data affected the results, as well as some people 
having better memory than others. Also, some people are used to less hours of sleep and can 
just as well as people with more sleep. 
 
We learned that scientists have to test a big sample of 100s or 1000s of people, 
depending on the test question and the test subjects.