Sleep Deprivation Essay

Sleep Deprivation Essay In Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Dissociated Components of Executive Functioning by Adrienne M. Tucker, Paul Whitney, Gregory Belenky, John M. Hinson, and Hans P.A. Van Dongen, they studied the effects of sleep deprivation on executive functions using a task battery. They concluded that sleep loss impairs someone's performance on simple cognitive tasks. The article is trying to figure out how sleep deprivation affects our daily performances and our behavior. The article is also trying to figure out to what extent executive functions are impaired by sleep loss. Stated in the article "Sleep Loss impairs performance on simple cognitive tasks such as signal detection and reaction time (RT) tests. The main question is "which functions are impaired by sleep loss?" They decided to test sleep deprivation on twenty-three healthy adults, who had no sleep problems at all. The article's problem is finding out which executive functions are impaired by sleep loss. In addition, what happens to our ability to solve and complete simple cognitive tasks? The method they came up with is to randomized 23 adults to a total sleep deprivation condition or a control condition. The performance on the executive function tasks was recorded after 51 hours of total sleep deprivation and two nights of recovery sleep. Performance was also measured throughout the experiment on a control task battery. From findings, "it has been inferred that sleep loss would impair executive functioning and performance on tasks that rely on prefrontal cortical function more than non-executive task performance." In this article, it found that the control group slept "more than the TSD group." The total sleep deprivation had less hours of sleep than the control group did. This article justifies the problem that sleep deprivation impairs your performance on simple cognitive tasks. "We investigated the extent to which working memory scanning efficiency, resistance to proactive interference, and other elements of task performance are affected by acute TSD." The article used an experiment on subjects to prove what happens to our memory and function processing when we experience sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation can also cause an impairment of functions because of "other component cognitive processes" involved in the task. I would have to agree with the thesis of this article. I do believe that sleep deprivation can impair how we function and process simple cognitive tasks. The article was logical, clear, and well ordered. They clearly explained how sleep deprivation works and how it affects our performance during the day. "Two recent studies found that sleep deprivation impaired performance on a go/no-go task." Also, another study reported that sleep deprivation "changed behavioral decisions involving risk on a lottery choice task." The article states that these tasks that we have to perform "selectively rely on the prefrontal cortex." If we have sleep deprivation, we cannot focus on our cognitive tasks or performances because our prefrontal cortex is not working correctly due to sleep deprivation. I do believe that this article justifies that sleep loss impairs our performance on simple cognitive tasks. The results from the experiment they did were that performance on the control task battery degraded was during sleep deprivation. One of the control task batteries, Sternberg task, showed impairment during deprivation. With the other tasks, it showed a completely different performance. The conclusion of this article is that sleep deprivation affected distinct components of cognitive processing differently. Memory scanning was not significantly affected by sleep deprivation. The article's results and conclusions are justifiable to our world. The article shows that some tasks do affect our performance on tasks, while others do not affect us at all. The results of this study shows that overall performance on executive performance tasks may decline with TSD. According to the state instability theory performance tasks measuring "sustain attention" are sensitive to sleep deprivation. This article shows that certain executive functions are affected by sleep deprivation and others are not so affected by it. The experiment, results, and conclusions in this article could be justifiable to our world and can contribute to our knowledge.