Can you make up for the lack of sleep caused by staying up all night with caffeine or a nap?



This article, originally posted in Japanese on 09:00 Oct 14, 2023, may contains some machine-translated parts.
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Everyone understands that it's better to get enough sleep, but when your schedule is packed, you may have no choice but to cut back on your sleep time and keep moving without getting enough sleep.

Kimberly Fenn , a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Michigan State University, explains the question of whether such lack of sleep can be compensated for by consuming caffeine or taking a nap.

Can coffee or a nap make up for sleep deprivation? A psychologist explains why there's no substitute for shut-eye
https://theconversation.com/can-coffee-or-a-nap-make-up-for-sleep-deprivation-a-psychologist-explains-why-theres-no-substitute-for-shut-eye-206847



Scientists have long known that sleep deprivation reduces your ability to stay alert. For example, when given a simple attentional task of ``monitoring a computer screen and pressing a button every time a red dot appears,'' sleep-deprived subjects were found to be less able to notice when a red dot appeared. I know.

In a 2019 study examining the effects of sleep deprivation on more complex tasks, Feng et al. found that subjects who performed various cognitive tasks in the evening were divided into groups who ``went home and went to sleep'' and those who ``slept straight to the lab.'' The participants were divided into groups of people who stayed up all night and had them complete the cognitive task again the next morning.

They found that sleep deprivation not only caused a simple decline in attention, but also caused more errors in procedural tasks. A procedural task is a task that involves performing a series of steps in sequence without skipping or repeating them, similar to real-life actions such as baking a cake according to the instructions in the recipe. . If you accidentally add sugar twice or forget to add eggs, the cake will not bake properly.



Feng and his team then investigated the effects of caffeine, found in coffee and energy drinks that sleep-deprived people use to wake up, on their attention and ability to perform procedural tasks.

Experiments in which sleep-deprived subjects were given caffeine to perform cognitive tasks showed that caffeine improved the alertness of sleep-deprived subjects, allowing them to perform on par with those who were asleep. Furthermore, administering caffeine to subjects who had slept overnight improved performance further, indicating that caffeine can help everyone stay alert, whether they are sleep-deprived or not.

However, caffeine did not improve the ability to perform procedural tasks in sleep-deprived people. This suggests that if sleep-deprived people consume caffeine, they may be able to perform at the level of playing simple games, but they may not be able to perform at complex tasks such as algebra exams.

Research results show that the sleepiness-reducing effect of caffeine ``depends on the type of task,'' so what kind of work is caffeine less effective for? -GIGAZINE



In another study , Fenn et al. investigated whether ``temporary naps'' could reduce the effects of sleep deprivation.

In the experiment, just like when investigating the effects of caffeine, the subjects were divided into ``a group that went home and went to sleep'' and ``a group that stayed up all night in the laboratory.'' Then, the groups that remained in the laboratory were assigned to ``no-nap group'', ``30-minute nap group from 4 to 6 a.m.'', and ``60-minute nap group from 4 to 6 a.m.'', and the results of the cognitive task were analyzed.

The analysis found that compared to participants who went home to sleep, participants who stayed in the lab had worse attention and performance on procedural tasks, even if they took a nap. In addition, the scores of subjects who took a 30-minute nap were lower than those who did not nap, and Feng said, ``Even if you take a nap in the middle of the night, it does not affect your cognitive ability in the morning after a night of sleep deprivation. It had no effect,' he said.



'Caffeine may help you stay awake and alert, but it won't help you with tasks that require complex thinking,' Fenn said. 'Taking a nap may make you feel better, but it won't improve your performance. In short, getting enough sleep is essential for your mind and brain, and there's no substitute for it.' Ta.

in Science, Posted by log1h_ik