The reason sleep is so important is because fatigue isnt simple. When we are tired, our performance doesnt degrade equally. Instead, when you lose a nights sleep, the parietal and occipital lobes in your brain become less active. The parietal lobe integrates information from the senses and is involved in our knowledge of numbers and manipulation of objects. The occipital lobe is involved in visual processing. So the parts of our mind responsible for understanding the world and the data around us start to slow down. This is because the brain is prioritizing the thalamus—the part of your brain responsible for keeping you awake. In evolutionary terms, this makes sense. If youre driven to find food, you need to stay awake and search, not compare recipes. After 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of six percent in glucose reaching the brain. (Thats why you crave donuts and candy.) But the loss isnt shared equally; the parietal lobe and the prefrontal cortex lose 12 percent to 14 percent of their glucose. And those are the areas we most need for thinking: for distinguishing between ideas, for social control, and to be able to tell the difference between good and bad. Ive sat in many boardrooms through the night, at the end of which seriously bad deals were done, Ive seen the cost of sleep deprivation. Not just in bad tempers, bad diets, and bad decisions. But in the loss of truly productive work and discussion that could have been less heroic but a lot more valuable. inc/margaret-heffernan/the-truth-about-sleep-and-productivity.html
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 19:25:39 +0000
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