Can having no sleep or a couple of hours affect your ability to absorb and remember information?

No sleep,noretention: Unfortunately if you don't have adequate rest, you may be able to retain the information short term but your long term memory will be negatively affected. If your sleep deprivation is more than one or two nights then even your shot term memory will be less than it would have been if you had been sleeping adequately. Our brain needs rest to function at its best. Sorry about that.