Should you pull an all nighter?
The all nighter. Can it work, does it work, and should you be doing it? We looked into it as part of our #happynewuniversityyear theme.
And…. Spoiler alert…. An article we found on the PLOS blog was titled That All-Nighter is not without Neuroconsequences.
You may be aware that sleep is essential for cell membrane and myelin maintenance in the brain, with the lipid integrity of these structures are particularly susceptible to insufficient sleep. So, although all nighter working on that assignment marathon can save you on the due date, it is likely to have neuroconsequences.
Neuroscientists from Norway set out to find out the effect of sleep deprivation to the brain in their recent PLOS ONE study. They examined how a night forgoing sleep affects the brain microstructure. The researchers were interested in two main questions: How does the brain change after a normal day of wakefulness and after sleep deprivation? So, they assessed a group of 21 healthy young men over the course of a day, for a total period of 23 hours of continued waking.
The results show that a day of waking was associated with widespread increases in white matter fractional anisotropy, and sleep deprivation was associated with widespread fractional anisotropy decreases. Fractional anisotropy is a measure of how strongly water diffuses along a single direction, and it was shown to change throughout the brain in sleep deprivation, including in the corpus callosum, brainstem, thalamus and frontotemporal and parieto-occipital tracts. In addition, larger decreases in axial diffusivity (diffusion along the length of a tract) in the brain after sleep deprivation were associated with greater sleepiness.
Researcher Dr Torbjorn Elvsashagen was quoted on the PLOS blog:
“My hypothesis would be that the putative effects of one night of sleep deprivation on white matter microstructure are short term and reverse after one to a few nights of normal sleep. However, it could be hypothesized that chronic sleep insufficiency might lead to longer-lasting alterations in brain structure. Consistent with this idea, evidence for an association between impaired sleep and localized cortical thinning was found in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, mild cognitive impairment and community-dwelling adults. Whether chronic sleep insufficiency can lead to longer-lasting alterations in white matter structure remains to be clarified.”
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