Knowra Sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation Sleep deprivation is a state caused by obtaining less sleep than the body needs, through involuntary sleep loss or deliberate restriction. It can impair attention, mood, judgment, and physical health.
Sleep homeostasis : The process by which sleep pressure builds during wakefulness and declines during sleep. As wakefulness continues, rising sleep pressure makes deprivation harder to resist.
Cognitive impairment : A reduction in mental abilities such as attention, memory, reasoning, or processing speed. It gathers the cognitive deficits commonly produced by inadequate sleep.
Sleep restriction : A deliberate or imposed reduction in time allotted for sleep. It is one common route to deprivation, especially when repeated across nights.
Multiple Sleep Latency Test : A clinical test measuring how quickly a person falls asleep across scheduled daytime nap opportunities. It quantifies physiological sleepiness, which can follow sustained sleep loss.
Individual differences in sleep need : Variation among people in the amount of sleep associated with healthy functioning. Different sleep needs complicate any single threshold for defining deprivation.
Circadian rhythm : An internal roughly 24-hour cycle that coordinates sleep, alertness, hormones, and other bodily functions. Circadian timing can amplify or temporarily mask the effects of lost sleep.
Driving under the influence of fatigue : Operating a vehicle while sleepiness or fatigue compromises alertness and safe performance. Drowsy driving turns impaired vigilance into a direct risk of crashes.
Sleep deprivation therapy : A psychiatric treatment that intentionally limits sleep, sometimes to rapidly reduce depressive symptoms. Clinical use is a controlled intervention, unlike unintended or chronic sleep loss.
Psychomotor vigilance task : A reaction-time test used to measure lapses in sustained attention and alertness. Its lapses are a sensitive, repeatable marker of impairment during sleep deprivation.
PER3 : A human gene involved in circadian timing and associated with variation in sleep-related traits. Genetic variation has been studied as a source of differing vulnerability to sleep loss.
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