Why the study?
Does 48 hours of total sleep deprivation affect blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, mood, and recognition memory in humans?
Does 48 hours of total sleep deprivation affect blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, mood, and recognition memory in humans?
48 hours of total sleep deprivation does not significantly impair recognition memory, while physiological and mood changes are strongly driven by circadian rhythms.
Recognition memory may withstand 48-hour sleep loss; leaves open circadian modulation of other cognitive domains in fatigued clinicians.
Previous research regarding the effects of sleep deprivation (SD) on human physiology and mood has yielded conflicting results. These findings may in part be due to the use of small sample sizes and the failure to separate out the pure effects of SD from those of circadian rhythms during data analysis. One purpose of this study was to clearly identify the effects of 48 hours of SD on blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and mood by overcoming the limitations of previous research. A second purpose was to evaluate the effects of SD on recognition memory. A repeated measures design was employed to collect physiological, mood, and memory data over a 48 hour period. While strong circadian rhythms were observed for most of the physiological and mood variables, recognition memory was unaffected by 48 hours of SD.
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Rankin et al. (1989) studied this question.
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