Sleep lab stays up late to solve shut-eye mysteries

Staying up can have adverse effects on your performance

Jessica Klement, The Brock Press (Brock University)

There have long been complaints that the western world is too fast-paced and that, since time is money, people do not want to waste valuable time sleeping. But Brock researchers are discovering that catching those extra hours of sleep are extremely important for your performance.

Students themselves are conducting several of the studies, including topics on sleep and memory, as well as the benefits of napping on daytime performance.

Kimberly Cote has been with the lab for six years and is currently conducting one of the lab’s main experiments, which deals with the effects of sleep deprivation and performance.

“Sleep performance and cognition is the general theme of the lab,” said Cote. “One of the main research questions we are interested in is what happens when you don’t get enough sleep. This has been a topic that has been researched and has been of interest to scientists and philosophers for hundreds of years. Many have tried to answer why we need sleep, and it’s interesting because we still do not know the answer.”

Scientists may not know the exact functions of sleep, but what they are sure of is that everybody needs a different amount of sleep. People between the ages of 18 to 30 need anywhere from six to nine and a half hours of sleep, but according to Cote most are getting around seven.

“The first sleep study was done 100 years ago when three people were deprived of sleep for three days. That is extreme; not a lot of us are doing that, [but] once in a while we will pull an all nighter,” said Cote. “What we don’t know a lot about is what happens when we deprive ourselves of sleep just by a little bit; this is a level of sleep loss that most of us are dealing with everyday.”

With new living situations and new daily schedules, chances are, your first year of university will interfere with regular sleep tendencies.

“If you are used to getting either eight hours of sleep at home and now maybe you are going to get six hours of sleep all year night after night, we are interested in knowing the effect of cutting your sleep by almost 30 per cent,” said Cote.

Catching up on sleep during the day may not be the best strategy. According to the Canadian Sleep Society, daytime napping only benefits people who have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep at night.

The time you spend napping may take away from the time you sleep at night. Twenty minutes for a nap is enough to feel rested and short enough not to interfere with nighttime sleep. And if you find that you are sleeping long hours at night and still need to nap during the day, you may have a sleeping disorder.

Cote and her assistants are still looking for interested students and people in the community to take part in the study.

During the first night spent sleeping in the lab, the participant gets their normal amount of sleep. On nights two and three, the centre imposes restrictions on the participants’ sleep, and the fourth night they get to sleep their normal amount again.

“We are looking at brain function performance when you just restrict sleep. There are real deficits that occur with that amount of sleep loss,” said Cote. “We want to find what parts of the brain are failing and which are functioning well and compensating for that level of sleep loss.”

“Sleep research is so exciting — it is a frontier field in psychology and neuroscience, and there is so much waiting to be discovered,” said Cote.