Infographic – This Is What Happens To Your Brain When You Don’t Get Enough Shut-Eye

You don’t need to go to med school to know that spending too little time between the sheets affects your judgment. But you do need a degree (several, actually) to put together this amazing infographic that shows all the negative aspects of sleep deprivation. Who knew it shrank the brain?

Commissioned by General Electric and Mic, the chart answers the age old question: What does lack of sleep do to your brain? Well, here are some of the more serious implications.

You can:

  • physically damage your brain by killing brain cells (a process that most scientists believe is irreparable)
  • lose long-term memories;
  • easily become angry;
  • lose divergent thinking (which helps us switch topics nimbly during a conversation);
  • experience hallucinations;
  • exhibit the so-called “head in the clouds” condition;
  • incorporate misinformation info memories of events observed after the sleep-starved night in question;
  • cause your frontal, temporal and parietal lobes to shrink (though scientists are still on the fence about this one);
  • stammer (babble / talk like an idiot);
  • make poor decisions based on desire;
  • take financial risks.

That last one deserves to be explained, and I’m sure you’re curious about it too. Apparently when you’re tired, making economic decisions lights up the reward center in the prefrontal cortex. This particular area springs into action when the person anticipated to win / make money, research has shown. So far so good. The problem is that a tired mind also decreases activity in the anterior insula, which is said to be responsible for aversion towards a negative outcome (i.e. losing money). The result, as you might have already guessed: a tired brain cares less about losing money.

So, don’t party and trade stock at the same time.

What Happens When Your Brain Doesn't Sleep

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