Thursday, May 26, 2005
From the "we already knew the answer before we conducted the experiment" department at UCSD...
SKIMPING on sleep does awful things to your brain. Planning, problem-solving, learning, concentration,working memory and alertness all take a hit. IQ scores tumble. "If you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your abilities are equivalent to someone who is legally drunk," says Sean Drummond from the University of California, San Diego.I don't know if they adjusted for this in their experiment, but usually when I've been up for 21 hours I AM legally drunk. Like I'm up at 6am playing bingo. I've noticed this causes poor decision making and impairment of the visual faculties, a malady that is usually rectified by several hours of sleep. An excellent lyrical description of the phenomenon can be found here.
