It doesn’t come as a surprise that a night without enough sleep can lead to a dazed morning. However there are more serious side effects to sleep deprivation than just drooping eyelids and yawns. There is no clear definition of exactly how little sleep is considered as sleep deprivation since each person needs different amounts of sleep. Rather, a person is considered sleep-deprived if they do not get enough sleep to feel awake and alert.
Still, research has shown that people can be both physically and psychologically damaged from sleep deprivation. In fact, it is unethical to purposefully deprive someone of sleep because the damage can be severe. The problems start on a minor scale, since the brain does not work very well when sleep-deprived. Some of the first impacts involve the ability to experience positive emotions. A sleep-deprived person may say they’re happy, but will have a neutral face, and they won’t recognize other people as happy either. The sleep-deprived brain may not be as capable of detecting positive emotions as well as a well-rested brain.
As well, as little as a single night of sleep deprivation can result in a phenomenon called “microsleeps”. During microsleeps, a person begins to fall into mini-snooze sessions which last about 30 seconds. The brain will go into a sleep state uncontrollably, and although people can force themselves awake, they will soon fall into another microsleep.
On a more major scale, losing sleep may cause delirium and even death. True delirium occurs when a person becomes completely disoriented. This often happens in patients who are hospitalized in intensive care units where lights and sounds continue all day and night, and doctors think loss of sleep is a major reason they develop bizarre behavior. Most seriously, researchers have found that no sleep can kill lab rats. In 2012, a Chinese man reportedly died from 11 days of sleep deprivation. Of course, it is not an easy venture since a person will most likely fall asleep before they die of sleep deprivation. Everything we know about sleep deprivation is harmful, but on a more positive note, most of these detrimental effects dissipate with enough sleep.
Here is a TED talk on why we sleep:
post by Katherine
