The Brain and Sleep

Your Brain Doesn't Work As Well As It Should, When You Don't Get Enough Sleep

From WorldHealth.net:

Not getting enough sleep? Well, don’t rely on your BRAIN to get you through the day! Being deprived of good sleep even for ONE night makes your brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns – just like a power failure. David Dinges, Associate Director of the Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says after a poor night’s sleep, it’s as though your brain’s both asleep and awake, and it switches between both states rapidly.

Imagine you’re sitting in a room watching a movie with the lights on. In a stable brain, the lights stay on all the time, but in a sleepy brain, the lights suddenly go off. People who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and severe lapses in both attention and visual processing. Dinges and his colleagues did brain imaging studies on 24 adults. The volunteers performed simple tasks involving visual attention when they were well rested, and again when they’d missed a night’s sleep. The results?

The researchers found significant, momentary lapses in several areas of the brain when the people hadn’t slept enough - but not when they were well rested. This suggests that when your brain is fatigued, it’s not capable of fully fending off the involuntary drive to sleep. Dinges says this makes it clear how dangerous sleep deprivation can be while, driving on the highway. Even a four-second lapse could lead to a major accident. Another great reason to treat yourself to enough shut-eye.