ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the neuroscience of sleep, and how this impacts on educational outcomes with a particular focus on adolescents. It also considers the broad effects of sleep deprivation on health and well-being and how this might indirectly impact on performance in the classroom before moving on to elucidate the direct effects on cognitive and academic outcomes. School-based sleep education programmes have been proposed as a means to put sleep health on the school agenda and to promote sufficient sleep as an everyday goal for adolescents. Work investigating delaying the school start time and altering bedtimes is directly driven by this understanding of the basic system. In this way, sleep research very clearly represents the crossroads between biology, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. From a methodological perspective, study limitations have included small sample size, lack of control group or follow-up measurement.
