Robert O’Brien, in an article, “Maybe You Need More
Sleep,” in an issue of The Reader’s Digest, reports the following
experiment on sleep: “For the last three years experiments have
been in progress at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in
Washington, DC. Subjects – more than one hundred military
and civilian volunteers have been kept awake for as long as
four days. Thousands of tests have measured the effects on
their behavior and personality. Results of these tests have given
scientists astonishingly new insights into the mysteries of sleep.
“They now know that the tired brain apparently craves sleep
so hungrily that it will sacrifice anything to get it. After only
a few hours of sleep loss, fleeting stolen naps called lapses,
or micro-sleep, occurred at the rate of three or four an hour.
As in real sleep, eyelids drooped, heartbeat slowed. Each lapse
lasted just a fraction of a second. Sometimes the lapses were
periods of blankness; sometimes they were filled with images
wisps of dreams. As hours of sleep loss mounted, the lapses
took place more often and lasted longer, perhaps two or thre
seconds. Even if the subjects had been piloting an airliner in
a thunderstorm, they still couldn’t have resisted micro-sleeps
for those few priceless seconds. And it can happen to you,as
many who have fallen asleep at the wheel of a car can testify.
Another starting effect of sleep deprivation was its attack on
human memory and perception. Many sleep-deprived subjects
e unable to retain information long enough to relate it to
the task they were supposed to perform. They were totally
befuddled in situations requiring them to hold several factors
in mind and act on them, as a pilot must when he skillfully
wind direction, air speed, altitude, and glide path to
make a safe landing.”