INTRODUCTION

Exposure to sleep deprivation can hinder a student's capacity in learning. However, in today's
generation, students sacrifice their sleeping hours for the sake of completing requirements on
time or reviewing for a long quiz for the next day. Frequently neglecting their need for sleep can
lead students' to a variety of disorders that can affect their physical body itself, the body systems
and its processes, and most importantly, their cognitive thinking. For students, particularly the
Grade 12 students of the Higher School of UMak which will be the respondents of thus study,
will mostly use their cognitive thinking to prove a point, learn from the suggestions of others, or
to ask himself on how to pull up a such unique performance to be presented to the class. The
basics of the cognition include thinking, knowing, remembering, problem-solving and judging,
and these are the higher-level functions of the brain.

Sleep deprivation can happen to anyone - including the researchers of this study. But as an
individual, everyone knows that each of the individual here on this planet differ from one
another. Everyone has a set of ability or capability that others cannot do. In this study, the
researchers are aiming to answer whether Grade 12 students who will participate in this study
have the same level of effect of sleep deprivation on their learning capability and whether they
can counteract its effects in order to accumulate and process information. The Grade 12 year
level is critical for the freshman year of college follows right after it, which means the efforts of
the Grade 12 students in studying doubles up, thus, their studying hours will also double and can
accumulate their supposed to be sleeping hours in order to have good grades as an impression to
college universities.

Expounding on this idea, the Higher School of UMak have four tracks available, and under those
tracks are students with different and unique capability and talents. The students under the
Academic track focuses more on mathematics, science, and also the philosophy. The Technical-
Vocational and Arts and Design tracks focuses on skills while the Sports track specializes on
kinetics and physical fitness. With that, students have different agenda to attend to - but whatever
agenda it is, those all contribute to their grades which means that it shouldn't be ignored but
rather should be given such efforts to ace. This means that more efforts, the more time to be
consumed and if possible, the sleeping hours is consumed too. Due to the diversity of the
students, the effects of sleep deprivation on the learning is diverse too.
For example, students under the Sports track does a lot of exercises, and exercises can help hone
their mental sharpness. Mental sharpness is a need in learning and if they are sleep deprived, they
can make their mental state sharp again after a series of exercises, thus making them grasp
information and even remember exercise routines sharply again. Other students under other
tracks rely on caffeine products to help them stay awake in their classes. The effect of caffeine
may help them but how long? Other students can also be already used to staying late at night to
study and can still participate in the class actively the next day.

A human’s daily life is compose of work and rest. Students do activities during the day and rest
at night or the other way around. Due to the continues loads of schoolwork, we tend to oversight
the need of sleep which affects our human body and also develop sleep deprivation. Studies had
shown that the prolonged sleep deprivation or also know as insufficient sleep leads to a decline
of cognitive function. It also affects the productivity of an individual. Sleep deprivation can
affect a human body in numerous ways. Sleeping is a nature to human being. It engage to cyclic
alternation of two main stages. The non-rapid eye movement (NREM) is about 80% of our sleep.
The rapid eye movement (REM) is the first 90 minutes of our sleep. It states about 20% to 25%
of our sleep. This connotes that sleep cycle is clearly structured. And all things considered that
each sleep phase is designated by specific chemicals, cellular and anatomic events.

Why is sleep important? As we all know a good night’s sleep is the key to happiness and
productivity, most especially to students. The ideal amount of sleep a person should get is at least
7 to 9 hours of sleep per night in order to function at their best. A good night’s sleep is an
important part of a student’s routine. A night of poor sleep can have a negative effect on a
student’s productivity towards the day. Getting a good amount of sleep can be a big help when it
comes to learning such as memorization and problem-solving. According to some articles, a
good amount of sleep is the easiest way for a student to study, because it will considerably help
with retaining information and speed up thinking process. When a person has less than 7-9 hours
of sleep, then we can say that they are sleep deprived. Sleep Deprivation is a general term to
describe a state caused by inadequate quantity of sleep.

Sleep deprivation becomes a greater problem for students as this affects their school
learning/performance. There are various ways that sleep deprivation affects a student. One
example is inattentiveness; the attention span of a student can be affected as they can’t really
focus on their work when they are sleep deprived.

Sleep Deprivation affects the academic performance of students. Research shows that 60 percent
of high school students report extreme daytime sleepiness. Sleep Deprivation negatively affects
school performance of students because it interferes with brain development, create unintended
mood swings and affect body development lastly immunity to sickness. Lack of sleep also
disrupts neural development, that is needed for all academic activities. Sleep deprivation
restrains the brain and makes learning harder. There are many factors affecting one’s sleep but
the most common to them is insomnia or the difficulty falling or staying asleep of course
insomnia has factors as well and the most common is the use of mobile phones before going to
sleep. Many students suffer insomnia because most of them use mobile phones Sleep
Deprivation is one of the causes of failing grades, laziness and punctuality and many more.

In human life, the periods of activity and rest alternate. In order to survive, human beings need to
work, and in order to be able to perform everyday activities properly they need sleep. For this
reason, nature has designated cyclic (circadian) alternation of waking and sleeping periods.
Being too occupied with everyday life, people nowadays frequently neglect their need for sleep,
which can lead to a number of disorders in various body systems and subsystems. Modern
society often makes it imperative to increase productivity, even at the cost of sleep deprivation.
However, research has shown that it is not wise because a longer period of sleep deprivation or
chronic shortening of its duration will necessarily lead to a decline of cognitive functions in
individuals, thus also leading to a decline in the quality of their productivity.

In human life, different forms of sleep deprivation may occur. Studies in this field make a
distinction between total sleep deprivation (absence of sleep), chronic sleep restriction , and the
situation of sleep disruption/sleep fragmentation4. Total sleep deprivation denotes a lack of sleep
for a specific period of time (one night at least) extending to a longer period of wake (in some
studies even more than 72 h).

Chronic sleep restriction implies long-term shortening of the usual duration of sleep in an
individual, or shortening of the duration of sleep compared to the expected physiological
duration for a given age. Te basic need for sleep in a healthy adult is roughly 7.5 to 8.5 hours of
sleep daily. Fragmented sleep signifies interrupted sleep. Fragmented sleep chiefy occurs in
cases of sleep disorders such as apnea, but it is also present in individuals who live in noisy
streets, whose usual sleep dynamics is interrupted by frequent excitation (due to external
disturbances). In studies that use sleep fragmentation it is necessary to carefully define the
changes provoked in the architecture of sleep, that is, which sleep/dream stage is specifically
targeted (for instance, SWS or REM sleep, or whether the researchers plan random
fragmentation, such as in the case of sleep disorder). This is of great importance because
different sleep fragmentation techniques can affect cognitive abilities of an individual in various
ways. Sleep fragmentation, total sleep deprivation and long-term chronic sleep restriction will all
have a virtually equal negative impact on cognitive functioning in humans.

However, there are slight differences. Those individuals whose regular sleep duration has been
reduced by 4 h/ night over a period of 14 days show roughly the same decrease in cognitive
functions as those who have experienced two days of total sleep deprivation. However, the
individuals subjected to sleep deprivation subjectively report feelings of sleepiness, fatigue and
pain, while the individuals subjected to chronic sleep deprivation do not report it. Hence, after a
longer period of chronic sleep restriction, the person is unable to subjectively evaluate his/her
objective lack of cognitive skills. Tis shows that sleep quantity, continuity and quality are
equally important factors in maintaining neural functions at an optimal level and that it is
possible to study the impact of each of these factors on the brain functioning.

Finally, whereas short-term sporadic exposure to sleep deprivation over the course of life most
probably will not have grave long-term consequences on neural functions in humans, a relatively
long and constant period of sleep deprivation, chronic sleep restriction or fragmentation can lead
to serious acute and chronic damage to neural functioning. In order to prevent this, it is of vital
importance to thoroughly research the mechanisms of neural adaptation in the situations of
insufficient sleep. In further studies of these mechanisms, integrative research on the impact of
sleep deprivation on macro, meso and micro levels within the scope of the same study could
contribute to more accurate conclusions about the basic cellular mechanisms responsible for the
detected behavioral deficits occurring due to sleep deprivation.