> assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT Now try work.
Couldn't agree more. Try doing something actually stressful while sleep deprived.
The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
201–210 of 368 posts
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#202> It seems that there’s very high variation in how people respond to sleep deprivation. There you go. It's the tyranny of averages: when variation between humans is greater than the effect of the intervention. This reminds me of reading The How of Happiness and learning that happiness is basically 50% genetics, 10% circumstances and 40% behavior. The author frames that 40% as a really big number, but I thought about…
Research in general pretty much has to work this way. You're trying to identify "laws" or rules that govern reality. Outliers are interesting, but in general we expect to find many instances of some phenomenon—which means that by default we're looking for cause-and-effect relationships that apply in "most cases." It's also worth mentioning that it's very easy for people to convince themselves that they're special or…
You're absolutely right, and I agree that the default assumption should be that humans are exactly the same. We aren't, of course, but abstracting away those details has worked quite well for centuries of scientific progress in medicine.
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
One problem with this approach is that if you've always had dysfunctional sleep, you don't understand what "feeling rested" really means. I had undiagnosed sleep apnea until my late 20s, and it was insane what a difference getting a CPAP made. I literally couldn't conceptualize how fatigued I had been all of my life until I had something to compare it against, and when I finally started getting restorative sleep my w…
How did you realize you needed to get a CPAP?
not OP, but if you have sleep apnea, you typically snore very loudly. You may not realize you're doing this because you're asleep and alone, but if you sleep with someone, they will definitely let you know something is wrong and a dr will tell you to get a CPAP machine.
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#204I've probably done a month or two of 4 hours a night at least. My sleep is all over the place. At times, I'll slip into occasional microsleeps at the office where I basically pass put for a split second ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep ) Very recently however, I had a two night bout of nearly total sleep deprivation (I maybe got 3 or 4 hours in a 48 hour period) and it was absolutely terrible. The second…
What did you find that helped you get to sleep?
I tried a mix of Unisom (doxylamine) and melatonin that night and I managed to fall asleep, although it took a good while and didnt think it was gonna happen at first.
I've had mixed results with melatonin before and DPH based sleep aids (benadryl, Zquil) tend to make me drowsy as hell for a few hours without falling asleep If something like that happens again though, I'll probably see a doctor.
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#205Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#206When I go many days in a row without enough sleep, I find that my cognitive abilities (i.e. what I am capable of doing) does not seem to significantly decline--as judged by things I build and people I interact with. But, my endurance of focus (the amount of time for which I can perform at a high level) does suffer. The weird thing is that it doesn't feel like I can't keep going... it's just that I sort of somehow don…
I think that's what other recent psychological/neurological research has found too (citation needed--but do remember reading about it recently from multiple sources). It figures that everyone each has their individual baseline "propensity to stay focused"--and sleep deprivation degrades someone's focus below that. You take a normal person and sleep deprive them, and their "propensity to stay focused" is lowered, but…
For me it's not just "focus on task" but also tasks with multiple interacting components (sounds like programming?). Lack of sleep makes it very hard to follow interacting chains of cause and effect.
I do find that for whatever reason the right amount of sleep deprivation makes me more upbeat and social (and silly). Like somehow the anxious, analytical part of me gets switched off first so the well-rested parts that rarely get used can steal the show.
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is by far the most important thing for HN to learn about this. The default level of self deception on this front is enormous.
I think the other part to remember is that the author of the article is 22. I didn't need sleep either when I was his age. I don't mean he's naive, just that a 22-year-old can abuse their body without too many negative consequences. As someone in my late 30s, I definitely feel it when I only get 4 hours of sleep.
That was my first thought as well (I"m in my late 30s too). When I was in college I could pull several all-nighters in a row without feeling too bad, or get 5-6 hours a sleep a night nearly indefinitely without too much trouble.
Nowadays... not so much.
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's what other recent psychological/neurological research has found too (citation needed--but do remember reading about it recently from multiple sources). It figures that everyone each has their individual baseline "propensity to stay focused"--and sleep deprivation degrades someone's focus below that. You take a normal person and sleep deprive them, and their "propensity to stay focused" is lowered, but…
> Ergo, ADHD might have a large sleep component. Yeah, I can count on one hand the number of times in my life when I woke up in the morning, even after a good night of sleep, and felt "refreshed". I didn't even know what that meant until I had a conversation with a coworker who just hops out of bed and is "on" immediately. Feels like there is a connection with my ADHD diagnosis.
Happens to me roughly once per year, twice in a good year. Usually I am too busy enjoying the novelty of it to put it to good use getting things done.
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you point me to some of these studies, ie. one that's a good starting reference.
The definitive reference for all things sleep is “why we sleep” by Matthew Walker. It’s a fantastic read, highly recommended. It single handedly moved getting enough sleep from a similar category to “I should probably eat less salt” to “this is the single most important thing for my health” for me.
I recall reading something linked on HN some months ago where someone dissected that book rather brutally, pointing out inaccuracies, flat-out lies, instances of ignoring inconvenient data, and conclusions drawn without any supporting evidence, so... not sure I'd treat that as gospel.
Oh, looks like it was by the same author as the article we're discussing: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
Re: The effects on cognition of sleeping 4 hours per night for 12-14 days
#210Was 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…
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-…
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.