Study: "Lack of sleep causes people to take risky decisions"

Via Drudge: The authors, who took brain scans during the tasks, found slow sleep waves were reduced in the right prefrontal cortex, which previous studies show is linked to higher risk-seeking behaviour.

‘We assume that behavioural changes occur for anatomical-functional reasons to some extent as a result of the right prefrontal cortex not being able to recover properly due to a chronic lack of sleep,’ Professor Baumann said.

Around 30 per cent of us do not get enough sleep and the study, published in the journal Annals of Neurology, ends with a warning.

It states: ‘While we cannot exclude that individuals in positions that require high-impact decision-making may be more resilient to the effects of sleep restriction, our results suggest that all of us, but particularly leaders of companies and countries, are well advised to work and make decisions only when fully sleep-satiated.’

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"Sleep deprivation may impact brain like binge drinking, researchers say"

Via Instapundit: “Our reaction time, our movement time, our cognitive decisions, our awareness of space and temporal positioning — that’s what alcohol [influences]. Sleep deprivation does the same thing,” said Farrell Cahill, associate research director of Medisys Health Group.

For what is considered adequate sleep, people typically need between seven and nine hours of sleep at a time. Six hours or fewer is considered sleep deprivation, Cahill said.

Signs that Cahill said indicate you may suffer from chronic sleep deprivation include:

• Lethargy and lack of energy
• Increase in inappropriate appetite
• Increased irritability
• Inability to govern sleep patterns
• Emotional imbalance
• Difficulty dealing with day-to-day stressors

Because sleep deprivation impacts bodily functions and metabolism, including appetite-regulating hormones, it also may cause someone to consume food when they don’t actually need it, Cahill said.

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Bill de Blasio: “I am not a morning person”

Bill de Blasio might need to invest in a better alarm clock if he wins on Tuesday.

The Democratic mayoral candidate admitted that he overslept this morning, keeping dozens of supporters, elected officials and reporters waiting more than an hour for a get-out-the-vote rally on the Upper West side that had been scheduled for 11:30 a.m.

“I got a call at five in the morning that threw off my sleep cycle. But other than that, it’s all good. So I wouldn’t say I typically overslept, I’d say it was a divided sleep,” he answered, refusing to share any details about the call.

“I am not a morning person,” he said. “I think we should reorient our society [to] staying up late, but I don’t think that’s happening right now.”

“I always tried to be the first one in in the morning and the last one to leave at night, take the fewest vacations and the least time away from the desk to go to the bathroom or have lunch,” he said in a recent radio interview. “You gotta be there.”

Excerpts from an Observer.com article