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I read somewhere that military experiments on sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique showed that after about two weeks people tend to drop off whatever (non invasive methods) you use to keep them awake (though I can't remember where I read it, so don't put too much faith in that).
There are a couple of holes in the ECR's premise though, that tropical fruit hormones make people into geniuses, but have somehow stopped doing so (and for some reason this effect is worsening every year, independent of special brane-fruit withdrawl), but lack of sleep might somehow fix it. There's also a little more lamarkism than I'm willing to buy into.
That said, I know that all my best pieces of work were written overnight on between 24 to 28 hour stints (during which time I was usually extremely upbeat), so maybe there's more to it than I'm willing to credit. However, on these occasions I frequently found myself suffering from mild tunnel vision once I came down from the adrenal high (as well as increased sensitivity to cold), so I'd be surprised if there were no negative effects.
Research on rats has indicated that sleep deprivation causes increased sensitivity to pain and temperature, though the former can me moderated through drugs that target (for example) metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, the NMDA receptor and by inhibition of nitric oxide synthesis. There's probably some chance that if sleep deprivation does have positive effects, they might also be mimicked through pharmaceuticals, though the usual caveats apply. |
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