Published: 14 May 2007
Those who work long hours and scrape by on scant slumber, beware: Sleep deprivation causes areas of the brain to malfunction, making people blunder.
American researchers, using brain scans of volunteers playing a computer card game, have discovered that the sleep-deprived show increased signs of rash risk-taking. That has been linked to changing activity levels in the parts of people's brains responsible for appreciating reward and understanding the significance of heavy debt.
Dr Michael Chee, one of the researchers undertaking the experiment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, said: "Understanding why we make poorer choices when sleep deprived is important not only because of the increasing numbers of persons affected, but also because there exist today unprecedented opportunities to incur damaging losses by means such as online gambling."
People should have between seven and eight hours sleep a night to maintain good health. continue...
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