Sleep deprivation slows and impairs a person’s judgement as much as being drunk, a new study claims.
Lack of sleep disrupts brain cell communication, leading to spacey behavior and mental lapses, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
“Severe fatigue exerts a similar influence on the brain as drinking too much,” said lead author Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at UCLA.
“Yet no legal or medical standards exist for identifying overtired drivers on the road the same way we target drunk drivers.”
For the study, UCLA researchers asked 12 people to respond to images as quickly as possible after staying up all night.
As the subjects grew sleepier, the electrodes in their brains fired off slower — especially in the temporal lobe, which regulates visual perception and memory.
Sleep deprivation “leads to cognitive lapses in how we perceive and react to the world around us,” Fried said.
“It takes longer for [a person’s] brain to register what its perceiving,” he added.