Insomnia

At the moment I really can't sleep and now I've fucked up my Ultradian rhythms by having a massive sleep after my driving lesson :( So, I decided to call upon all my 2nd year psychology A level knowledge so I can be like a normal human being and sleep at night and do things in the day. Anyhow this got me thinking about the sleep deprivation studies we had to learn. Hüber-Weidman looked at a bunch of studies and came up with a 'guideline' thing:

After 1 night of sleep deprivation: People reported being uncomfortable, but it was tolerable.

2 nights: People feel a much greater urge to sleep, in particular, when the body temperature is lowest at 3-5am

3 nights: People begin to find tasks involving sustained attention or complex processing much more difficult, especially if they are boring. However when encouraged by an experimenter or if the task is made more interesting the performance greatly improves. As with 2 nights without sleep it is hardest to stay awake in the early hours.

4 nights: Micro-sleep periods (a kind of mini sleep that lasts around 3 seconds, while the person stares blankly into space and temporarily loses awareness) start to occur while the person is awake. People become irritable and confused.

5 nights: Same effects as above, the person may start to experience delusions. Apparently cognitive abilities (e.g problem solving) remain reasonably unimpaired.

6 nights: The person begins to show signs of 'sleep deprivation psychosis', which involves a loss of personal identity, a sense of depersonalisation and increased difficulty in coping with people and the environment.

I really liked the sleep deprivation studies but they weren't very many for obvious ethical reasons. Peter Tripp was said to had suffered long term psychological damage after he stayed awake for 8 days for a charity wakeathon. But then we can't tell if this damage was from the sleep deprivation directly as we don't have a time machine.

Anyway, hopefully tonight I'll sleep well and I won't need to worry about sleep deprivation psychosis. (actually I think when I saw the machinist I used my ultimate psychology knowledge to diagnose Christian Bale with this, but he was also a paranoid Schizophrenic wasn't he? So maybe not? I can't remember...?)

In other news my Mum just made me a lemon and sugar pancake for no real reason and I look about a thousand stone in photos and my puppy is MASSIVE