Great post! I generally find book reviews and book summaries quite useful, and am happy to see more of them. On the object level, I am vaguely remembering a study that I can’t find right now, that added something interesting to the sleep question, which was something like this:
“We had three test-groups, one of which slept normally at about 8 hours a night, one of which slept for 7 hours a night, and one of which slept for 6 hours a night, for a week. The 7 hour group started out with a similar performance to the 8 hour group, but went down to the performance of the 6 hour group after about 4 days. However, the self-assessment of how sleep-deprived the individuals were was quite accurate for the 6 hour group, but didn’t identify any worsening aspects of sleep deprivation for the 7 hour group, even after 4 days of testing. This suggests that subjects are quite bad a assessing mild sleep-deprivation, even after prolonged exposure.”
I wonder whether the book made any reference to that study, since I’ve been looking for a while, and if anyone can find it, than I do remember it being a significant update on how much I trust myself to assess how much sleep I need.
In chapter 7 (Too Extreme for the Guinness Book of World Records) Walker mentions a research by David Dinges which seems kind of similar to what you described. I didn’t find a reference in the book, but I found this highly cited paper, which seems to me like the one he was referring:
The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology From Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation
Walker mentions a research by Gregory Belenky with almost identical results that was published around the same time. I found a highly cited paper which seems to me like the one he was referring:
Patterns of performance degradation and restoration during sleep restriction and subsequent recovery: a sleep dose‐response study
Walker has a sub-title “you do not know how sleep-deprived you are when you are sleep-deprived” in chapter 7, so you can guess what the researches above found.
Great post! I generally find book reviews and book summaries quite useful, and am happy to see more of them. On the object level, I am vaguely remembering a study that I can’t find right now, that added something interesting to the sleep question, which was something like this:
“We had three test-groups, one of which slept normally at about 8 hours a night, one of which slept for 7 hours a night, and one of which slept for 6 hours a night, for a week. The 7 hour group started out with a similar performance to the 8 hour group, but went down to the performance of the 6 hour group after about 4 days. However, the self-assessment of how sleep-deprived the individuals were was quite accurate for the 6 hour group, but didn’t identify any worsening aspects of sleep deprivation for the 7 hour group, even after 4 days of testing. This suggests that subjects are quite bad a assessing mild sleep-deprivation, even after prolonged exposure.”
I wonder whether the book made any reference to that study, since I’ve been looking for a while, and if anyone can find it, than I do remember it being a significant update on how much I trust myself to assess how much sleep I need.
In chapter 7 (Too Extreme for the Guinness Book of World Records) Walker mentions a research by David Dinges which seems kind of similar to what you described. I didn’t find a reference in the book, but I found this highly cited paper, which seems to me like the one he was referring:
The Cumulative Cost of Additional Wakefulness: Dose-Response Effects on Neurobehavioral Functions and Sleep Physiology From Chronic Sleep Restriction and Total Sleep Deprivation
https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article/26/2/117/2709164
Walker mentions a research by Gregory Belenky with almost identical results that was published around the same time. I found a highly cited paper which seems to me like the one he was referring:
Patterns of performance degradation and restoration during sleep restriction and subsequent recovery: a sleep dose‐response study
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00337.x
TL;DR
Walker has a sub-title “you do not know how sleep-deprived you are when you are sleep-deprived” in chapter 7, so you can guess what the researches above found.
Excellent, these really do like the studies that I remember reading. Thank you a lot!
I would be glad to send you $10 via PayPal if you want, since I’ve been looking for these for quite a while.
No thanks. Knowing I helped you out is exactly the right reward for me :)