How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

New York Times, April 15th, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sleep-t.html?_r=1&ref=health

This article goes into asking how much sleep does the average person need and the research conducted surrounding this topic. A University of Pennsylvania study was conducted as the longest sleep-restriction study of its kind, assigning three different groups with different sleep schedules: four hours, six hours, and eights hours for two weeks. The subjects were tested every two each day for their ability to sustain attention through the P.V.T, which measures sleepiness. The results demonstrated that those who had eight hours, not surprisingly, hardly had any attention lapses over the study time. The four- and six-hour groups had results that declined each day. More so, at the end of the two weeks, the six-hour sleepers were as impaired as those who had been sleep-deprived for 24 hours straight. Thus, this study show that eight hours of sleep is excellent and six hours is no good. When a similar study tested five-, seven-, and nine-hour intervals, the seven-hour group's response time slowed over the course of the study, showing that even an hour below the 8-hour benchmark is not optimum.

This study is interesting, especially for a college student like myself who runs on little to no sleep during the week. Nevertheless, I agree with the fact that this study does not consider factors in daily lives that stimulate the mind including coffee and bright lights that can counteract sleepiness. It would also be interesting looking at studies that see if catching up on sleep during the weekends lessens one's sleep debt because this is definitely the way I recover on my lack of sleep.  I would say for most students, optimal levels of sleep are not attained and perhaps, more classes that begin later should be offered in order to give students a longer time to sleep and therefore perform better in school.