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06/20/2008 - Studies Investigate Dangers of Driver Fatigue
In recent years, sleep researchers have likened the impaired performance of chronically tired truckers to drivers who are legally drunk. New research, recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience, illustrates that being sleep deprived even for a single night may be extremely dangerous for all drivers, including commercial motor vehicle operators.
A University of Pennsylvania researcher told Reuters that the sleep-deprived brain is quite unstable, switching rapidly between sleep mode and wakefulness. The “sleepy” periods are punctuated by lapses in attention and poor visual processing.
“Imagine you are sitting in a room watching a movie with the lights on. In a stable brain, the lights stay on all the time. In a sleepy brain, the lights suddenly go off,” said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Twenty-four adults participated in the study, which was conducted by an international team of neuroscientists. The participants performed simple tasks while sleep deprived and also after a normal night’s sleep. The research team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure blood flow in the brain.
The researchers found that sleep-deprived individuals experienced visual processing failures not experienced by their well-rested counterparts. However, sleep-deprived individuals also had periods of near-normal brain function during which they could complete tasks efficiently.
In a sleep-deprived individual, the tired brain attempts to power down for sleep. When the individual tries to stay awake to perform a task, such as driving, brain function will fluctuate.
This fluctuation makes sleep depravation and safety-sensitive duties a dangerous combination. “The periods of apparently normal functioning could give a false sense of competency and security when in fact, the brain’s inconsistency could have dire consequences,” said Michael Chee, lead study author and professor at Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School.
A number of previous studies have shown the compromising effects of sleep deprivation. A 2006 study, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, found that truckers who routinely get too little sleep or suffer from sleep apnea are safety risks.
Researchers examined and tested more than 400 truck drivers and found that those who routinely slept fewer than five hours a night were likely to perform poorly on tests measuring sleepiness, attention, reaction time and steering ability. Drivers with sleep apnea also exhibited signs of sleepiness and performed poorly. Allan Pack, a sleep expert who led the study, even went so far as to say the tired truckers exhibited impaired performance similar to that of intoxicated drivers.
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