Bad news if you thought you could count on coffee
Michigan
State University
Researchers
from MSU's Sleep and Learning Lab, led by psychology associate professor
Kimberly Fenn, assessed how effective caffeine was in counteracting the
negative effects of sleep deprivation on cognition. As it turns out, caffeine
can only get you so far.
The
study -- published in the most recent edition of Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition -- assessed
the impact of caffeine after a night of sleep deprivation. More than 275
participants were asked to complete a simple attention task as well as a more
challenging "placekeeping" task that required completion of tasks in
a specific order without skipping or repeating steps.
Fenn's study is the first to investigate the effect of caffeine on placekeeping after a period of sleep deprivation.
"We
found that sleep deprivation impaired performance on both types of tasks and
that having caffeine helped people successfully achieve the easier task.
However, it had little effect on performance on the placekeeping task for most
participants," Fenn said.
She
added: "Caffeine may improve the ability to stay awake and attend to a
task, but it doesn't do much to prevent the sort of procedural errors that can
cause things like medical mistakes and car accidents."
Insufficient
sleep is pervasive in the United States, a problem that has intensified during
the pandemic, Fenn said. Consistently lacking adequate sleep not only affects
cognition and alters mood, but can eventually take a toll on immunity.
"Caffeine
increases energy, reduces sleepiness and can even improve mood, but it
absolutely does not replace a full night of sleep, Fenn said. "Although
people may feel as if they can combat sleep deprivation with caffeine, their
performance on higher-level tasks will likely still be impaired. This is one of
the reasons why sleep deprivation can be so dangerous."
Fenn
said that the study has the potential to inform both theory and practice.
"If
we had found that caffeine significantly reduced procedural errors under
conditions of sleep deprivation, this would have broad implications for
individuals who must perform high stakes procedures with insufficient sleep,
like surgeons, pilots and police officers," Fenn said. "Instead, our
findings underscore the importance of prioritizing sleep."