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Comment by rkagerer | Hacker News Reader

Was his assessment basically just playing video games? I've noticed that's an activity I can do proficiently for an extended duration on very little sleep (along with things like "bulk" coding) but there are others I'm awful at unless I'm well rested (eg. complex planning, creative efforts like songwriting) and I've found my communication skills start to become impaired when I'm really sleep deprived.

I'd be curious to see how he performs on a broader spectrum of cognitive and even physical assessments.

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I have exactly what you say. My hypothesis is that your cortex/tertiary brain functions shut down and all that's left is your limbic system and the brainstem. We do a lot of learning in our basal ganglia and cerebellum (pavlov-esque stuff and similar things). That stays more active.

I once made a giant switch statement of 150 lines at my first coding job, and I thought I did a job well done. The next day I came back, well rested, only to realize that I could replace the whole thing with an already existing csv file and a for loop.

Whoopsie :)

How I differ from your experience: there's a certain sleep deprivation sweet spot where my "outbound communication" (e.g. talking or sympathy) skills are better, because I'm a bit less inhibited. My "inboud communication" (e.g. listening or empathy) do suffer a bit. I've noticed I become more of a doer (is that how you write it?). Normally, I overthink things, according to others. That's not the case when I'm mildly sleep deprived. Then I am: optimistic, charging in head first and get the job done! Boom! Yea, kinda like that, I think I'd be a good sales guy on mild sleep deprivation. Oh, and I don't worry about the consequences too much :)

When I get too sleep deprived my communication skills do take a hit.

Thanks for sharing! Yep, I can relate to a lot of that.

On occasion I've noticed slight deprivation seem to stimulate my performance in some tasks. It's accompanied by a feeling of being wired and on a roll. That mildly elated "let's get 'er done!" ferver. I always assumed it was adrenaline pumping through my system to keep me going, as a (poor?) substitute for rest. Like the body's coffee.

Also seen cases where it similarly lowered my inhibitions (almost like a mild buzz). But once I'm significantly deprived, my vocabulary starts to become reduced - I have trouble remembering the word I really want (I know it's there, just not what it is), and resort to a more basic one that's less precise. It's generally the "outbound" side that suffers. I think it's also in part that my multitasking gets worse. In a normal conversation I'll be listening, and at the same time processing what's being said in the context of the conversation and my own experiences, as well as thinking ahead to formulate the phrasing for my response. When I'm really tired, I don't multitask as well (it takes more focus to perform the primary task I'm doing, e.g. listening and retaining short-term memory, and if I try to juggle too many things at once I'll lose concentration). I've learned when it's a better time to go get some rest than get pulled into a discussion about that complex $100 million merger or a deep dive talking about feelings with my partner ;-).

What type of video games? That matters a lot to me. I can play a turn-based game like Civilization completely fine on little sleep (measuring the quality of play objectively, like by productivity or victory within a certain number of turns.) Soft real-time games like say a Mario platformer are a little worse but playable if I'm tired. Hard real-time games with very tight and sensitive timing like Guitar Hero or high-level Tetris are unplayable at anywhere near peak form if I'm not fully rested.

Games requiring long term focus, chess for example, I personally have difficulty playing when sleep deprived, even though it is turn based. I find I play at ~200 rating points lower on low sleep.

Agreed. Many a late sleepless night have I blown 200 points or more on frustrating blitz games. I would regularly play a game or two during lunch breaks, climb a good bit, then stay up too late one night and rage throw my points into the abyss.

I think it's an inverted U curve.

Games that require fast response and planning suffer on one extreme, and abstract thinking games like chess suffer on the other.

The real question is whether this penalty goes away once you adjust to your new sleep schedule.

Adrenaline goes a long way for me. I had trouble waking up for 9am classes in college, coffee didn't help, but 8am CounterStrike did.

Lower communication skills on sleep deprivation are apparent to other people much sooner then to the sleep deprived person. Same goes for drop mood regulation skills. This effect is even larger as other people adjust to drop in those communication and mood regulation skills (e.g. will avoid communication and definitely wont even try harder or more stressful topics.).

I have this as repeated observation from time when I lived with sleep deprived gamer.

This gotta be my favorite comment in the entire thread. I take three tests: PVT, a video game, SAT -- and I get accused of "just playing video games" and told to perform a broader spectrum of assessments.

Fair point!

I'm not familiar with PVT, and from the description I thought it seemed itself like a simple (if boring) videogame - or at least measured a subset of similar skills, like reaction time and attention lapse.

Didn't mean to come across as dismissive; I really am interested in broader metrics on this stuff. But don't deprive yourself again just for our sake. Thanks for your work, for reiterating the SAT piece, and for stimulating some great HN discussion.

(ps. You attributed some of the minor, sleep-deprived PVT and SAT deterioration to "getting lost in thought". Do you think you'd encounter the same degree of boredom or drifting focus if you did them again post-experiment, in a well-rested state?)

PVT is a standard in psychology task used to assess sleepiness - no relation to video games

Note that the "getting lost in thought" happened when I slept 8 hours not 4. I think it just came to me taking hours upon hours of very similar tasks.

>I was extremely bored in the last 2 days of taking control measurements and sometimes got distracted and lost in thought, which resulted in me getting 3 and 4 lapses per session (as can be seen on Figure 1). I do not believe that these lapses represent my lack of alertness. ...

>The last low control score on the verbal section is a result of me becoming very bored with taking the SAT 5 days in a row, getting lost in thought for 10 minutes, and having to rush.

I will continue to experiment with sleep, mostly for myself :) and I'm planning to test memory and skill acquisition next time -- these are the two things people say are affected the most, so I'll try to figure out if that is true for me.

I had this same thought reading it. Anecdotal but my experience with prolonged sleep deprevation was a noticeable decline in my design capabilities.

I'm actually refactoring some of the code/sub systems I created during that time now and some solutions are very wacky...creative, but a super weird way to approach it.

Sleep deprivation might not have been the only contributor, but there a noticeable change in our code base during that time and I distinctly remember worrying about my sleep

For me it depends on the video game. I've noticed that I'm much more resilient to cognitive disruptors in counterstrike than I am in Starcraft.

Starcraft 2 seems to be very sensitive to my cognitive state. When I've been looked back at my starcraft 2 score, I see it jump right before and during a really productive week.

I also see it drop or stall from a lack of sleep before I notice it in my day to day life or work.

I believe learning requires good sleep. TFA's experiment did not measure learning capacity.

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