How does your brain work with too little sleep? As police officers, firefighters, nurses, grad students…and most parents…all know, sleep deprivation can cause your mind to react in odd ways. New research by Washington State University scientists has found that the sleep-deprived mind works differently than previously thought.

Gregory Belenky, M.D. and Hans Van Dongen of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at WSU Spokane use handheld devices to check the sleep habits and reaction times of their sleep study volunteers. Photo by Robert Hubner

Hans Van Dongen and his colleagues at WSU Spokane’s Sleep and Performance Research Center have found that some executive functions of the mind, such as working memory, are essentially unaffected by as much as 51 hours of sleep deprivation. Other functions are highly affected, including information intake, where information becomes distorted before it’s processed in the mind.