This Is Your Brain on No Sleep | Brain Games

we’re conducting a grueling 36 hours
sleep deprivation experiment in order to
find out what happens to your brain and
body when you go without sleep in the
safety of our lab I read the same bed I
go over and over
Taylor John and Melissa have hit the
halfway mark in our 36-hour experiment
and they’re starting to feel it yeah
it’ll get worse those words of
encouragement after 18 hours the average
person starts to enter a sleep-deprived
state which means it’s a good time to
test alertness hold the egg by the
string pinched between your two fingers
this is our take on a classic sleep test
if you begin to doze off you may drop
the egg now holding an egg on a string
for 60 seconds may seem like an easy
task but not when you’ve gone 18 plus
hours without sleep after going without
sleep for an excessive amount of time
your brain starts shutting down areas it
considers non vital to your survival in
this case John’s brain told the muscles
in his arm and hand to relax causing him
to drop the egg and even though John may
think he’s wide-awake certain parts of
his body are shutting off John is the
only one who fails the alertness test
despite being so confident he’d do well
in our sleep lab I’m pretty used to
being up for long lengths of time I
think I’ll do very well at it part of
the reason could be that he’s been
eating a lot after a big meal your body
sends more blood and energy to the
digestive system than to the brain which
is why you often get tired after eating
a heavy meal especially if you have a
sleep debt like John