--- title: Sleep Deprivation: Less Than 5 Hours of Sleep Leads to False Memories description: Getting less than five hours of sleep was linked to false memories, a study shows canonical: https://time.com/3328149/sleep-deprivation-false-memories/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-11T17:11:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:08:15.282Z article:section: Health og:title: Getting Less Than 5 Hours of Sleep Leads to False Memories og:description: Losing out on sleep can affect your memory, a study shows og:url: https://time.com/3328149/sleep-deprivation-false-memories/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Getting Less Than 5 Hours of Sleep Leads to False Memories twitter:description: Losing out on sleep can affect your memory, a study shows twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Less Than 5 Hours of Sleep Leads to False Memories > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=7b7db80e-d814-496b-996e-b528484b6f19&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1)  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 11, 2014 5:11 PM UTC  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 11, 2014 5:11 PM UTC Skimping on sleep wears down your body in so many ways: it worsens cognitive function, slows reaction time, and makes learning more difficult. (The list goes on and on: after reading our new [feature](http://time.com/3326565/the-power-of-sleep/?pcd=hp-magmod) about the power of sleep, you might just scare yourself sleepy.) That’s quite enough consequences without piling on the results of a recent [study](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/9/1674?etoc) in _Psychological Science_, which found that sleep deprivation is linked to false memories. Among the 193 people tested, those who got 5 or fewer hours of sleep for just one night were significantly more likely to say they’d seen a news video when they actually hadn’t. There’s more than just fantastical daydreaming at stake. False memories in the form of eyewitness misidentifications are thought to be the number-one cause of wrongful convictions in the U.S., the study authors write, so sleep deprivation could have consequences beyond the scope of your own health. The study also discovered that students were more prone to researchers’ false suggestions when they hadn’t slept more than five hours. They wove those suggestions into their responses 38% of the time, while the group that got plenty of sleep did so 28% of the time. That’s probably because sleep deprivation leads to problems encoding new information, the authors write. “Our results also suggest that total sleep deprivation may not be necessary to increase false memory,” they write in the study. 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