"Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure - brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness " says David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, commenting upon his study which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience. It's as though it is both asleep and awake as they are switching between each other very rapidly," he said.
Participants in his study submitted to brain scans while they attempted to perform simple puzzle tasks. The experimental participants stayed awake one full night before their testing and were compared with folks who got a full night's sleep. The results clearly showed the brain's confusion among the sleep-deprived participants. Momentary lapses of function were frequent in many areas of the brain. Driving in this manner is clearly very dangerous while the brain is confused.
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