Experiment shows that SLEEP does matter!

One more post for today, to address a very important issue... that is SLEEP!

At the beginning of the semester, one of our homework is to sleep more, cos we have to expect to be sleep derived when this module starts. Actually I don't believe that it is possible we can sleep more in the vacation so that I can sleep less during the semester. Sleeping is just like eating and drinking to me. It is important to eat tmr's share then I don't eat tmr, right?

And it seems like Prof Ben is promoting Sleeping is a waste of time to us. I read the comments here ("programmers don't sleep") as well as heard him saying "If you don't sleep, you get a lot of things done." I actually wanted to do a post like this long ago, but someone did it before me.

Actually I got an interesting experiment that I want to share, and dedicated to this project teammate in my group who sleeps from 6am to 10am everyday(?!) because he wants to do a lot and clears his daily to-do list. And this project teammate can just survive on one meal a day! =O

Below is summarized from a book "Psychology in Context"...

Sleep Deprivation: What Happens When You Skimp on Sleep?

• Attention and Performance Drop (tt is when accidents can happen!)
• Emotions Flare (gets impatient and aggravated easily)
  [u may be interested in this video (part1 and part2) about a person who did a 8 days no sleep experiment and his character and his life changed after the experiment]
• The Body Suffers (immune system drops and if someone nearby has the H1N1 flu, u r the 1st to get it!)
• Learning Decreases (sleep actually consolidates memories...)

[I found this other link online that tells us the effects on sleep deprivation, which includes how it can affect our intelligence as well :( http://www.learninginfo.org/sleep-deprivation.htm]

There is this experiment conducted in 2001 on whether is it advisable to "stay up one night to cram in as much extra work as you can" or "sleep a couple of hours less each night over the next several nights".

Twelve participants btn the ages of 21 and 35 took part in 4 sleep conditions. The control condition is no sleep loss, and the participants spent 8 hours in bed (11pm-7am) for 4 nights.

• slow sleep loss condition: 6 hrs (1am-7am) for 4 nights
• intermediate sleep loss condition: 4 hours (3am-7am) for 2 nights
• rapid sleep loss condition: 0 hours (all-nighter) for 1 night

A picture speaks a thousand words, so here is the result:

The key results were the measures taken after a total of 8 hours of sleep deprivation. The results were clear-cut: Rapid sleep loss (all-nighter) disrupted alertness memory and reaction time much more than did the same amount of sleep loss spread out over time. Moreover, as shown in Figure 5.4, the faster the rate of sleep loss, the greater the impairment. Losing a couple of hours of sleep per night (slow sleep loss) led to the least overall impairment.

Why I got so much material? Cos I am interested in Psychology (my interest is very diverse), then in once of the vacation, I got nothing better to do, so I went to "research" some of these stuff =P