What Happens If You Don't Sleep? Hour by Hour

What happens if you don't sleep? Hour by hour: sleep debt at hour zero, drunk-level impairment at hour 17, microsleeps past 24, hallucinations by hour 72, and what the record holder looked like after 264 hours awake. Why the brain needs sleep: waste clearance, memory filing, emotional control. Also fatal familial insomnia, the one disease where a human can no longer sleep, and the rare gene variant behind genuine short sleepers. General explainer, not medical advice. If sleep is a persistent problem, talk to a doctor. CHAPTERS 0:00 Three in the Morning 0:11 Hour 0: Adenosine and Sleep Debt 0:37 Hour 17 to 24: Same as Being Drunk 1:18 Past 24 Hours: Microsleeps 1:37 Hour 36: Stress Hormones and Hunger 1:52 Hour 48: The Emotional Brain Breaks 2:13 Hour 72: Hallucinations 2:34 Randy Gardner: 264 Hours Awake 3:07 Rats and Fatal Familial Insomnia 3:34 What Is Sleep Actually For? 4:16 Can You Be a Short Sleeper? 4:27 Tonight, Go to Sleep SOURCES Williamson AM, Feyer AM. "Moderate sleep deprivation produces impairments in cognitive and motor performance equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication." Occupational and Environmental Medicine 57(10), 2000, 649-655. Dawson D, Reid K. "Fatigue, alcohol and performance impairment." Nature 388, 1997, 235. Spiegel K, Tasali E, Penev P, Van Cauter E. "Brief communication: Sleep curtailment in healthy young men is associated with decreased leptin levels, elevated ghrelin levels, and increased hunger and appetite." Annals of Internal Medicine 141(11), 2004, 846-850. Yoo SS, Gujar N, Hu P, Jolesz FA, Walker MP. "The human emotional brain without sleep: a prefrontal amygdala disconnect." Current Biology 17(20), 2007, R877-R878. Yoo SS, Hu PT, Gujar N, Jolesz FA, Walker MP. "A deficit in the ability to form new human memories without sleep." Nature Neuroscience 10(3), 2007, 385-392. Ross JJ. "Neurological findings after prolonged sleep deprivation." Archives of Neurology 12, 1965, 399-403. (the Randy Gardner case) Rechtschaffen A, Bergmann BM. "Sleep deprivation in the rat: an update of the 1989 paper." Sleep 25(1), 2002, 18-24. Lugaresi E, et al. "Fatal familial insomnia and dysautonomia with selective degeneration of thalamic nuclei." New England Journal of Medicine 315(16), 1986, 997-1003. Xie L, et al. "Sleep drives metabolite clearance from the adult brain." Science 342(6156), 2013, 373-377. He Y, et al. "The transcriptional repressor DEC2 regulates sleep length in mammals." Science 325(5942), 2009, 866-870. #sleepdeprivation #sleepscience #insomnia