Cognitive benefits of sleep and their loss due to sleep deprivation

Loewi discovered the chemical basis of neurotransmission in 1921, he attributed his experimental design to an insight he made during sleep. 1 In recent years, scientific discoveries have begun to empirically validate the hypothetical role of sleep in cognitive processes such as insight formation and memory consolidation.Yet these new and important scientific findings-that sleep benefits cognition-have gained little attention in the debates over regulating resident work hours.In this article, I aim to achieve three goals: First, I will show that sleep deprivation causes two independent negative consequences to cognition: a detriment and a loss of benefit; I will explain this distinction.Second, I will briefly review evidence supporting sleep's benefits for cognition.Finally, I will argue that these benefits of sleep for cognition provide novel reasons why depriving residents of sleep is inconsistent with our ethical standards and educational goals for medical training.In this final section, I will also argue against the assertion that residents should use performance-enhancing medications to overcome the effects of sleep deprivation.