Total sleep deprivation impairs attention and higher-order cognitive processes | Hacker News Reader

Total sleep deprivation impairs attention and higher-order cognitive processes

psycnet.apa.org

140 pointsbookofjoe81 comments

And causes hallucinations!

Will post my story here in the near future, but let's just say a good man was doing my taxes at 3am. It was okay at first, because he was a hard worker. Suddenly I realized it was 3am, and told him to rush it. He complied, hunched his back and buried his nose in all the documents. I looked down at my legs and saw that I was wearing my boxers only, I told him to hurry it up because I gotta go to bed. I could hear him mumbling a response and hunching his shoulders some more to work faster. I felt bad for putting all this pressure on him. I got closer and put a hand on his shoulder, only to find that he had fallen asleep. I looked around and saw that his desk was a crib, and that this man was my premii 2 months old son.

I'm a father of twins.

I learned here on HN that Eskimos don't have access to a lot of drugs or alcohol, so they used to just starve themselves in order to get to this hallucinogenic state!

People really have a deep seeded desire to alter their consciousness.

That sounds interesting. Do you remember the comment/post?

You know, I searched for it but I just can’t find it. Perhaps I’m mistaken about the source.

I was working in my bedroom on the second evening of a sleepless marathon. I kept hearing distant chatter, like two people whispering together.

I thought my roommate had brought someone home and they were whispering in the living room. I put some clothes on and exited my bedroom to find the house completely dark and empty.

On my way back to the bedroom, confused, I realized the faucet was running slightly in the bathroom across the hall and my brain was interpreting it as human whispers and English-like words.

I notice this sort of aural hallucination always happens to me after 24 hours of staying awake.

Now I have to ask: why do you stay more than 24 hours awake, more than once?

Yeah. If I am awake for more than like 40 hours I start to hallucinate. Never anything close to as bad as what you describe, mostly just weird shapes in the corners of my eyes. But I have had also had some aural hallucinations too.

Rarely, I've experienced sleep paralysis [0] when going to sleep after being awake for 30+ hours, a feeling that's dreadful and scary, something I'd never wish on my enemy.

Occasionally, I lucid dream [1]: Flying like a bird or falling like a feather after 22+ hours of wakefulness, a feeling that is very addictive.

Often times, a pulsating head and neck migraine [2] follows sleep deprivation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-head...

When my mother was in the hospital, I usually stayed with her during the nights, awake, in case she needed something. Two nights I couldn't sleep the day before, which meant I had to stay awake, in dim light, after 24 hours without sleep. I started seeing spiders crawling the walls. I just had to focs my eyes to make them stop, but I saw spiders on the corner of my eyesight, which was umcofortable. After those nights, I understood how important is to sleep well.

One of my favourite examples of sleep deprived hallucinations is from Courtney Dauwalter. Courtney is an ultra marathon runner (eg 200 miles) and there are many times we she is extremely sleep deprived while running.

She has mentioned that while running she has seen bunnies running alongside her, a violin playing man, and even a woman churning butter[0]! Very interesting how our mind reacts to minimal sleep.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imivD-wnmDs

As someone with serious sleeping problems (at least once a week I miss a night of sleep) and bad sleeping habits overall, I’ve definitely noticed my attention span and ability to think clearly taking a serious nosedive over the last couple years. Who would have thought, sleep is super important.

I wonder if there is evidence that the brain adapts? I too have been having sleep problems due to a heavy footed night owl neighbor. In the beginning it was an issue, however, I found over the last two years my body kicks into a type of an overdrive and overcomes this. Obviously it's not good, however, I do notice a type of compensation.

Afaik the brain just gets used to it in the sense that it makes it feel normal. Measurable things like reaction time and cognitive tests keep getting worse while the test subjects claim not feeling like they get worse after a few days of sustained sleep reduction.

I don't think this comes without a long term cost. Among other things, some studies with pretty sound methodology have shown that people are very bad at self-estimating their own impairment from sleep-deprivation. It's likely worse than you think it is.

I'd encourage you to move if you can afford to, or to invest in a white noise machine and ear plugs that are comfortable to sleep in. Mack's wax ear plugs have made a huge change for me.

Go on Amazon and get yourself one of those acupressure mats. Worst case, you will lose like $25, but I can attest to its effectiveness as one of the early users (and I have recommended it to friends ever since). Cheapest thing ever that can change your life.

I have trouble falling asleep, mind racing, all that jazz. I have to be EXHAUSTED to fall asleep. This thing is a miracle. After 15-20 minutes, you start drifting off, then wake up on it about an hour later, toss it to the side, and immediately fall back asleep, super-drowsy. And in the morning you feel like you had slept 36 hours straight.

Or weighted blankets!!

Second this. I have a 10kg one, and wish I got it sooner. The biggest difference seems to be that I don’t wake up as much in the night.

Magnesium supplements did it for me. I needed to take them for an unrelated reason - eye tremors - and the first time I took them I was suddenly overcome with tiredness that night. I've been taking them ever since to keep my sleep regulated, and they've really helped with my alertness during the day.

I first learned of magnesium supplements here on HN. Changed my life after years of sleep problems.

I'm so excited right now! I have the same issue as you with falling asleep. Is this what you're talking about?:

https://amzn.to/2qZ372D

I hope posting a link to amazon doesn't violate any site guidelines, but man, if this really helps I'm going to order it right away.

Yeah - that type. I wasn't a fan of the neck pillow when I tried it, but your mileage may vary. I flip mine landscape mode so that I get good back shoulder coverage, by the way.

Thanks for the tip, going to order one now. Have a nice weekend!

thanks! could you share the make/model you have or share a link? There are tons on there and want to get a specific recommendation that I know worked for at least one person.

I have the Spoonk brand, so any one of those. They do all look like the same mat, branded differently :)

If there was an alternative to sleep, then that would be a huge evolutionary advantage.

Sleep could also just be a low-energy mode for times that are (used to be) unproductive, i. e. darkness.

The study in the linked article (and lots of others like it) begs to differ. If sleep was merely convenient rather the biologically necessary, our cognitive functions would not become severely hampered after only a few hours less sleep. Nor would people die after (medically) losing the ability to sleep after x number of days.

Further, if it were true, overweight people very likely wouldn't need to sleep at all.

> Who would have thought, sleep is super important.

not sure of the sarcasm level here, but it astounds me that anyone wouldn't.

Related: Parents of young children found to be completely dead inside

Oh man...I can totally relate to it.. I have a 2 year kid and last 2 years have been most difficult for me and my wife's life given that I need to take of the startup as well

Chicken or the egg

I had this job that thought you were stealing from them if you got more than 90 minutes sleep a night they would literally call the engineers 7 days a week at 3am to make sure we were not "slipping up" by getting sleep worst job of my life absolutely illegal labor practice as well imagine having to work 140 hours to keep getting paid for 40.

Unless this job was a study on sleep deprivation, how could they possibly believe they had the right to do this?

Oncall duties?

what country was this in?

What industry was this and where?

There are some industries (architecture, design, medicine are some that come to mind) where sleep deprivation is viewed as a macho badge of honor and there's this culture of showing off extreme workaholism. Of course this is not efficient work due to cognitive impairment and burnout, but it's more of a macho / hazing thing.

I see some people consider this article to be a trivial commonplace but in some environments sleep is considered a waste of time. For example when I was at MIT I think everybody pulled a couple of all-nighters per week. There was a culture of how to manage it, not one of how to make that unnecessary.

The same is true in the medical profession. Sleep deprivation is absolutely the norm for young doctors and surgeons in residence, which should be a scary thing given how often people's lives are quite literally in their hands.

Ref: PDF of study https://msu.edu/~ema/StepanAltmannFennJEPG.pdf

Day before yesterday a bus crashed in Argentina, two kids died as consequence of the crash.

Earlier this month the organism that regulates public transportation allowed companies to send just one driver on long distance trips, forcing that person to stay awake during the whole journey.

I don't think we should dehumanize people just because they are on the other site of the debate. To address the point, there are good reasons for deprioritising safety given the economic climate.

What are the good reasons?

Argentina's economy is going down the drain atm. Labor cost is a big factor in transportation so keeping two drivers might be making the things too expensive. Independent of this, buses are safer than cars, so safety wise the argument could be made if it gets people out of the car it's worth it. I don't think I've ever had two drivers for long distance buses in Europe. I don't think we're very unsafe.

I'm sure the 2 dead kids didn't either.

I am not sure where in Europe you've experienced _long_ distance buses but heavy vehicles have a tacho by law in any EU country.

All drivers have to prove they rested x hours if they have done y kilometers. Any company violating this will be charged.

Also consider that Argentina North to South is well over 3000km which would be equivalent to a trip between Estonia and Greece.

The thing about the tacho is true. On my trip from NL to Austria all of us had to get out so the driver could take rest at some point. This particular regulation doesn't force bus companies to just double the labor cost, though.

Problem is not just one trip, and you're right, economy is going down the drain here.

Problem is that those drivers take as much work as they can because they can't make ends meet after they collect wages. So they put extra hours to get more money. Remove a second driver, and you have a sleep deprived driver taking double or triple shifts just to collect an extra coin.

I don't doubt it. Hopefully the damage will be limited. Maybe better wages are possible when things get better. Not many people can sleep on a bus though. having two sleep deprived drivers might not be that much better than one.

We don't need two sleep deprived drivers, that was just another way to mitigate the problem.

We need companies to pay drivers enough so they can do their job and go to sleep before taking the next shift.

https://www.clarin.com/sociedad/pequena-trampa-legal-habilit...

Yeah, I bet you think that the economy problem in Argentina will get better cutting costs. The real problem, however, is the job culture here, if not the overall culture.

Saying it's due to culture it's like saying no one is to blame and there's no way to change this in the short term.

No, it's not culture. The problem is the finantial and economical decisions taken by the government in the past 4 years. Hopefully these will be reverted by the next administration.

This source, who asked to reserve his name, was eloquent: “Outside the high season is one thing, but within the season, employers, to increase their profitability, force workers not to respect their hours of rest. The driver should say so, yes, but if you have your source of work at stake… ”

(link in spanish) https://www.clarin.com/sociedad/pequena-trampa-legal-habilit...

Yawning induces sleep! I forcefully and repeatedly yawn for 10 minutes to rid of insomnia. Really works

I know this book gets posted anytime something sleep related comes up... but I still find it underrated.

'Why We Sleep'[0] has changed my sleeping habits for the better and I wish everyone had the chance to read it. It's like a manual explaining how your body works 1/3 of the time you're alive.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

"“Why We Sleep” Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

Thanks for the link. I love the book and have recommended to many friends, but also felt the lack of scientific sources somewhat disappointing.

Physicians, keep this mind. Don’t let your hospital health system overlords do this to you.

Can someone define total sleep deprivation (TSD) in the context of this article? I'm assuming it's going one night with no sleep at all, but is that correct?

I'm about to publish a groundbreaking study which also demonstrates that eating five double quarter pounders with cheese and fries a day will lead to obesity.

Sleep-dep is a standard consciousness-alteration technique in the monastic/mystic scene. Along with fasting and meditation.

filed under no shit

Yesterday was all about getting enough light during the day, today is about getting good sleep at night. Hopefully we'll also hear about eating healthy, getting some exercise, and the importance of healthy friendships.

Looking forward to the posts on how Financial stability is conducive to a low stress environment overall improving the mental and physical health of all affected.

Don't forget how well financial stability correlates with monetary well-being!

That’s verging on unacceptable speech in certain circles I’ve been a part of. Watch out or soon you’ll be telling me to clean up my bedroom too /s

Don't forget to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet of beef and benzos!

I've read this as Bezos. Yes, I have a rich diet of amazon.

I won’t believe any of that makes a difference until I see a poorly validated study from grant-hungry academics published in a barely read journal.

Even better: I won't believe any of that until there's some kind of Silicon Valley philosophy, beverage or at least some sort of "healthy living" app that readily packages this for me.

What's the latest research on oxygen?

We're not sure yet but we believe this is important to respiratory function in most people.

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