Sleep deprivation

Question 1

What is amount of sleep influenced by?

Answer 1

Age- children need more than adults
Lifestyle- Shift workers, noisy places, activity
Genetics- Females need more sleep than males.

Question 2

Sleep deprivation?

Answer 2

going without sleep, denied necessary or desired amounts of sleep.

Question 3

Partial sleep deprivation?

Answer 3

Having less sleep than normally required. Some sleep in 24 hour period but not enough to meet needs in quality or quantity

• Very common
• When deprived of sleep participants fail to complete simple, monotonous repetitive tasks.

Question 4

Chronic sleep deprivation?

Answer 4

Not having enough sleep over a long period of time
- Linked to depression, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, accelerated ageing process, immune deficiencies

Question 5

Total sleep deprivation?

Answer 5

Not having any sleep at all for 24 period, one or several nights in a row.

• Not common
• Can cause death

Question 6

Physiological effects …

Answer 6

• fatigue
• trembling hands
• drooping eyelids
• staring and inability to focus eyes
• slurred speech
• lack of energy
• increased pain sensitivity
• Headaches
  Effects are short lived as we recover quickly when we next sleep.

Question 7

Psychological effects…

Answer 7

Affective/emotional:
Mood changes, irritability, lack of motivation

Behavioural/what happens:
Slower reaction times, clumsiness, risk taking

Cognitive:
lack of concentration, impaired memory (trouble with encoding, not retrieval), illogical/ irrational thoughts, poor decision making, and trouble with simple monotonous tasks

Question 8

Total sleep deprivation effects…

Answer 8

Psychological effects: 
Paranoia 
hallucinations
delusions
Decline in cognitive ability 
moodiness 

Physiological effects: 
Fatigue
drooping eyelids
slurred speech
increased sensitivity to pain 
Body temp drops 
Impaired functioning of the immune system

Question 9

REM Rebound…

Answer 9

Studies show that following periods of interrupted REM sleep participants spend more time in REM to catch up.

Question 10

NREM sleep loss:

Answer 10

Interferes with the process of replenishing and restoring body tissues, recovering from fatigue etc

Question 11

REM sleep loss…

Answer 11

Important for brain development in early lifespan stages
Restorative ‘exercise’ functions of the brain- improve and preserve.
loss of motor coordination
poor concentration
Poor memory
Irritability
tendency to hallucinate

Question 12

WHat is sleep debt?

Answer 12

The accumulated amount of sleep loss from insufficient sleep
A typical pattern of sleep recovery following sleep deprivation is that you will:
- Fall asleep faster
- Total time asleep is prolonged but do not need to make up total amount
- No long term effects

• ANother means of achieving sleep recovery is through a microsleep, that is a very short period of drowsiness or sleeping tat occurs while awake.
  this naturally occurs after 3-4 days, lasts about 30 seconds

EEG patterns resemble that of the early stages of NREM sleep.

Question 13

Sleep deprivation psychosis…

Answer 13

depersonalisation, (loss of personal identity) difficulty coping

Question 14

What are Microsleeps

Answer 14

AFter 3-4 days of sleep deprivation people will engage in microsleeps

• Brief 3-15 seconds, involuntary sleep that occurrs while a person appears to be awake.
• EEG pattern resembles stage 1 or 2 NREM

Question 15

Amount of sleep required after experiencing sleep deprivation?

Answer 15

After sleep deprivation sleep onset tends to be quicker and the total sleep time tends to be longer for the first night.