What Happens If You Don't Sleep The Teen Who Stayed Awake 11 Days

In 1963, a 17-year-old in San Diego stayed awake for 264 hours straight for a school science fair. This is what happened to Randy Gardner's brain, day by day: the mood swings, the memory loss, the hallucinations, and why a Stanford sleep scientist watching him saw something completely different. Plus what sleep loss actually does inside your head, why coffee only hides it, and the surprising way his brain recovered. Chapters 0:00 A science fair project gone too far 0:35 The record he wanted to beat 1:05 Day by day 1:47 The pinball twist 2:35 What sleep loss does to your brain 3:46 The ending nobody expected 4:33 What happened later Sources The experiment: Gulevich, Dement & Johnson (1966), Archives of General Psychiatry Medical observations: Ross (1965), Archives of Neurology Adenosine and sleep pressure: Porkka-Heiskanen et al. (1997), Science Brain cells switching off while awake: Vyazovskiy et al. (2011), Nature; Nir et al. (2017), Nature Medicine Randy Gardner interview: Hidden Brain podcast, "Eyes Wide Open" Accounts of the experiment differ, and Gardner's later insomnia is his own account. Please don't try this at home.