A new study shows that not sleeping well has the same effect on your brain as drinking alcohol the night before. Your brain cells are affected and trying to get some rest.
This study found that sleep deprivation can make brain cells communicate slower and be more sluggish. This study was published in Nature Medicine. The implications of this discovery are important to recognize: If you’re driving on the highway and a car stalls out in front of you, for example, you might not notice fast enough to stop or swerve to avoid it.
The effect of sleep deprivation is similar to what you would see if someone had been drinking. This can affect reflex times, reaction times and how you "see things". This new research shows lack of sleep actually slows down a region of the brain involved in visual perception and memory.
This UCLA study looked at the activity of individual brain cells in patients who were not allow to sleep. The scientists were able to monitor 12 epileptic patients, who were being kept awake all night before a surgery (to try to trigger a seizure). During this long sleepless night, researchers examined the activity of hundreds of neurons in each patient's brain. The participants also did cognitive exercises, such as face-matching. This allowed the researchers correlate brain cell activity with cognitive performance.
As the long night wore on and tiredness set in, brain cells became slower and slower to respond to cognitive tasks. When they did respond, their activity was sloppier than normal. It was noted that the firing of the neurons was weaker and slower, which consequently lead to mistakes. That’s how closely connected the performance of the brain cells and the performance of the person was. The researchers point out that the changes in cognitive performance that come with sleep deprivation is quite similar to the decline that comes from drinking alcohol.The effect is similar to what you see when someone has been drinking, said Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. Making matters worse, while “we have ways to measure drunk driving, we don’t have fatigue measures,” Fried said.
Source: Sleepless night? It may have the same effect on your brain as alcohol
Additional Reading:
- How Lack of Sleep Plays on your Health in other Ways
- Positioning Pillows to Help you Sleep at Night
- The importance of Sleep for Children ages 1 to 3
- Travel Pillow Needed for When I am away from my Home
- The Worst Position of Sleep Ever
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