Under the Cover of Darkness

The far-reaching effects of sleep loss

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Strange things happen at night, especially when we’re not sleeping. Results from observational studies of people who don’t sleep much (blue icons) and from experiments on human volunteers (pink icons) have revealed that the consequences of sleep deprivation are far-reaching, from molecules and cells to organs and behavior.

The short-term consequences of sleep loss are numerous, but whether they leave a lasting scar is unknown. So Carol Everson and Aniko Szabo of the Medical College of Wisconsin subjected rats to a 10-month regime of sleep restriction and then allowed the animals to sleep as they pleased for several months. Compared to control animals, the sleep-deprived rats suffered a variety of physical effects, with some problems persisting even after the recovery period (PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022987, 2011). ...

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a portion of a larger infographic showing the effects of sleep loss on the human body

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Meet the Author

Kerry Grens
Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.
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