So, LabSpaces.net confirms what we’ve all been feeling after those long, late nights. Sleeplessness causes power failures in your brain:
The research team, led by Michael Chee, MBBS, at the Duke–National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School in Singapore (Duke-NUS), used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain blood flow in people who were either kept awake all night or allowed a good night’s sleep.
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Sleep-deprived people also showed reduced activity in brain regions involved in visual processing during attentional lapses. Because the brain becomes less responsive to sensory stimuli during sleep, reduced activity in these regions suggests that, during attentional lapses, the sleep-deprived brain enters a sleep-like state.
“To my knowledge, this is one of the first studies to look carefully at brain imaging during lapses of consciousness after sleep deprivation, the equivalent of ‘blanking out,’” said Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD, at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. Although attentional lapses result in the same behaviors, “lapses due to sleep deprivation are clearly different neurobiologically than lapses in well-rested people,” Mignot said.