More on Sleep, ATP, and Adenosine We spend roughly 1/3 of our
lives in the state of sleep. Researchers are beginning to learn
why we must do this, and are gleaning hints of possible
technologies for bypassing at least part of the sleep
imperative, and doing well on less sleep. “For a long time,
researchers have known that sleep deprivation results in
increased levels of adenosine in the brain, and has this effect
from fruit flies to mice to humans.” Abel said. “There is
accumulating evidence that this adenosine is really the source
of a number of the deficits and impact of sleep deprivation,
including memory loss and attention deficits. One thing that
underscores that evidence is that caffeine is a drug that blocks
the effects of adenosine, so we sometimes refer to this as ‘the
Starbucks experiment.’” Abel’s research actually involved two
parallel experiments on sleep-deprived mice, designed to test
adenosine’s involvement in memory impairment in different ways.
One experiment involved genetically engineered