Word: microsleep
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...experience, I learned, is hardly unique. A chronically sleep-deprived person will often go through repeated episodes of microsleep, sometimes accompanied by microdreams (which are usually interpreted as hallucinations). If you have been up for more than 20 hours, your reflexes are roughly comparable to those of someone with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08--which in many states is enough to be considered legally drunk. You should not drive--and you most certainly should not be flying a plane--in that condition. Moreover, the effects add up. Sleeping only six hours a night for a week makes...
...real world, people overcome their somnolence--at least temporarily--by drinking coffee, taking a walk around the block or chatting with office mates. But then they find themselves nodding off in meetings or, worse, behind the wheel. Those short snatches of unconsciousness are what researchers call microsleep, a sure sign of sleep deprivation. "If people are falling asleep because 'the room was hot' or 'the meeting was boring,' that's not coping with sleep loss. I would argue that they're eroding their productive capability," says Dinges...
...first sign that you're not so awake as you think. After about 18 hours without sleep, your reaction time begins to slow from a quarter of a second to half a second and then longer. If you're like most people, you will start to experience bouts of microsleep--moments when you zone out for anywhere from two to 20 seconds and drift out of your lane or find that you have to keep rereading the same passage. Your...
| 1 |