It’s week nine, and the midterm-induced exhaustion is at its peak. The coffee buzz that kept you awake through your 8 a.m. class has since worn off, and as you sink deeper into your seat, notes and lecture become hieroglyphic gibberish. Your head slumps, and you wake seconds later, your notes are a mess and you missed information.
These small lapses in consciousness are called microsleeps, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and unlike their chronic cousin narcolepsy, anyone can experience them. When participating in second-nature activities such as driving or taking notes in class, sleep depravation can cause brief lapses in consciousness that students are unable to control.
Sleep depravation results in wake-state instability, which means that an exhausted person will have less control over their motor and cognitive functions than would a well-rested person. The microsleeps that the tired person may experience occur when regions of the brain, specifically in the motor cortex, take short naps, according to NIH.
According to a study by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, “wake state instability means that at any given moment in time the cognitive performance of the sleep-deprived individual is unpredictable and a product of [systems] mediating sleep initiation and wake maintenance.”
However, behavioral microsleeps occur just as commonly in the well-rested as they do in the sleep-deprived. A study by the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society found that microsleeps can last anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds and result from a variety of factors, including monotonous midday tasks or a pre-class lunch, the latter consuming energy that aids in digestion rather than focus.
Whatever the cause may be, Dr. Jim Miles of the Cal State University Long Beach Psychology Department understands the inattentiveness and exhaustion that comes about mid-semester.
“When midterms roll around, no one gets enough sleep and everyone’s studying all the time,” said Miles, who took the time to share some knowledge as students gathered at his door for help with midterm preparation last Wednesday. “You might think studying makes you do better, but … it can severely hurt your performance for several reasons.”
For the microsleeper, Miles said that what’s happening in the brain before, during and after these short bouts of sleep achieves nothing other than inhibits productivity in the classroom.
“[This is referred to as] inattentional blindness, where you can miss things directly in front of you when you’re not paying attention to them,” Miles said. “That’s what is happening when people go into [microsleeps]… when they have this lack of consciousness [they are blind to] anything that’s in front of them.”
Miles said that a lack of sleeping hours limits the time that the brain requires to encode new information, rendering useless those hours staring blankly at notes. During this condition of wake state instability, information is skimmed superficially rather than absorbed.
“The general idea is that at some point while you’re sleeping, you go through consolidation so you’re making your memories more stable and enduring and less likely to be effected by interference,” Miles said. “It does seem that deeper levels of sleep are required to get the full benefit of any kind of consolidation.”
During sleep, we go through multiple stages. The first two stages are lighter and characterized by physiological changes in the body, such as change in temperature, according to Dr. Miles. These deeper levels of snoozing are manifest in periods of 90 minutes, when the person enters stage four sleep. If a person wakes abruptly before entering, or in the middle of, one of the deeper cycles, Miles said the physiological changes happening in the body result in more fatigue than before a nap.
The student without enough hours in a day can do their best to structure the limited amount of sleep they have.
“If you have 40 minutes free, set an alarm for 20 minutes and take a 20 minute nap,” Miles recommended. “You’ll get some benefits to stage one, early on, sleep, but none of the costs that come with waking up halfway through stage two or stage three sleep.”