How sleep deprivation affects the brain

 How sleep deprivation affects the brain

Scientists in Canada have launched what would be the world's largest study of the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain.

A team from the University of Western Ontario, wants people from all over the world to register online for cognitive testing.

Skills test computer games specifically designed as reasoning, language understanding and decision making.

I joined a group of volunteers who tested the tests and my brain was scanned by them.

pioneer

Professor Adrian Owen, a neurochemical based British Brain and Mind Institute in London, Ontario, heads the study.

The team will gather cognitive scores and see the changes based on how much sleep people have had.

Each of the sleep conditions are different but if enough people join the study, it allows scientists to determine the average number of hours needed for optimal brain functioning.

I joined four volunteers who spent the night at Western University, where we tested brain games and were able to show how lack of sleep affects cognitive performance.

How sleep deprivation affects the brain

The volunteers

Dr. Hooman Ganjavi, 42 years old. Psychiatrist regularly recalls the night: "Four to five hours of sleep every night is typical for me. I know that lack of sleep increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, but, like many doctors, it did not apply to me. "

Sylvie Salewski, 31 years old. Mother of two girls under five: "A good night is when I'm woken up two or three times, I do not remember what it feels like to sleep at night, and I feel often fuzzy the next day."

Evan Agnew, 75 years old. Employee night for retirees. "I've never needed eight hours of sleep at a time, and at my age, I do not think I need more than four hours at a time. I'm going to rest during the day with a nap or two."

Cecilia Kramar, 31 years old. "Cognitive neuroscientist who conducts research with the mouse at night, which means night hours in the laboratory," When I do not sleep much, I can not complicate the next day, reading a scientific article because my brain Do not work well . "

tests

The tests can be played on any computer, tablet or smartphone.

Double problem: sounds simple, but actually extends to gray matter. You must click on the word below that matches the color in which the word is written previously. So if the previous word is "blue", but it is red, you must click on the word below in red, even though it says "blue." The devilish ones.

Odd Out: It starts out easy, but it becomes more complex as you try to find a different way to others.

Grammatical reasoning: is the statement in a diagram true or false? It sounds easy, until you start to deal with negative statements.

Land-use planning: the ability to plan the future is tested - like all games, which measures the cognitive abilities we use several times during the day.

As we have done?

After staying until 04:00, we had four hours of sleep.

When we re-did the cognitive tests later in the morning, Evan, Cecilia and I have marked much less than we did the night before.

Hooman - who used to be on call and respond to patients - has not seen much of her punctuation, while Sylvie has actually improved.

brain scans

Sylvie said, "Although I feel a bit fuzzy this morning, maybe I just used to run very little sleep, I have to be when my kids woke up, so it's normal for me."

I knew for a long time that I was not working well when sleep was private, so it came as no surprise that my cognitive skills have dropped dramatically in the morning.

In order to know what was going on in my brain, I repeated the cognitive tests on an MRI machine.

I was scout twice - after a normal night's sleep, then after the night spent in the candle.

The functional MRI scanner is able to detect blood flow in the brain - so that areas that work show an increase in harder activity levels, such as drops of red to red.

The comparison between the scans was radiant: after being deprived of sleep, my brain was well below par. There were far fewer echoes