It turns out that skipping a few hours' sleep a night will affect your cognition and performance as though you hadn't slept in days. I really think that we're all on the edge of bugfuck and have been since the invention of the electric light.
Chronic restriction of sleep periods to 4 h or 6 h per night over 14 consecutive days resulted in significant cumulative, dose-dependent deficits in cognitive performance on all tasks. Subjective sleepiness ratings showed an acute response to sleep restriction but only small further increases on subsequent days, and did not significantly differentiate the 6 h and 4 h conditions. Polysomnographic variables and d power in the non- REM sleep EEG–a putative marker of sleep homeostasis–displayed an acute response to sleep restriction with negligible further changes across the 14 restricted nights. Comparison of chronic sleep restriction to total sleep deprivation showed that the latter resulted in disproportionately large waking neurobehavioral and sleep d power responses relative to how much sleep was lost. A statistical model revealed that, regardless of the mode of sleep deprivation, lapses in behavioral alertness were nearlinearly related to the cumulative duration of wakefulness in excess of 15.84 h (s.e. 0.73 h).
Irony moment: I decided to catch up on my blogging instead of going to bed.
(via Futurismic)
