Work, friendship, sports, relatives, food, reading - there is clearly not enough time in the day to keep up with everything. To live a fulfilling life, many of us carve out precious hours of sleep. We borrow to pay double the price the next day. A busy life leads to a dramatic reduction, if not a cessation of sleep. If there was a disease in the world that deprives people of a third of their precious life, the search for a cure would be generously funded. This is the holy grail of sleep researchers. Perhaps they found the thread.
As with so many others, we find it difficult to give up our biological need for sleep because of the cultural code. The practice of sleeping for eight hours on a soft, raised platform, singly or in pairs, is not really typical for humans. Many traditional societies sleep in snatches and social activities continue throughout the night. Some people wake up when something interesting happens, and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of a conversation to end the argument. Sleep is universal, but it comes to everyone in different ways.
Different species also seem to sleep in different ways. Herbivores sleep much less than carnivores - elephants for four hours, lions for twenty - not least because they need more time to feed and protect themselves. As omnivores, humans fall somewhere between these two sleeping groups. Circadian rhythms, the body's internal clock, allow us to anticipate the day's wakefulness cycle and to organize body functions over time so that they do not interfere with each other.
Our internal clock is based on a chemical oscillation, a feedback loop at the cellular level that lasts 24 hours and hides in a collection of brain cells behind our eyes (near the optic nerves). Even deep in a cave with no access to light or clocks, our bodies keep an internal timeline of almost exactly 24 hours. When isolated, our body clocks will run a little slower. If the sleep and wake schedule is not updated with light, we will wake up a few minutes later each day. This deeply rooted cycle can be found in every known multicellular organism, and the rotation of the Earth - corresponding to the cycles of day and night - shaped it.
A person's sleep consists of several 90-minute cycles of brain activity. In an awake person, the electroencephalogram (EEG) readings are very complex, but when sleep occurs, the brain waves slow down, go through the first stage (relaxation), the second (light sleep) and the third (slow-wave deep sleep). After these restorative stages, the brain undergoes a rapid eye movement phase in which the brain resembles waking. Those awakened at this stage remember what they dreamed about.
One of the most valuable results of work on sleep deprivation has been the identification of clear individual differences: some people perform better after sleepless nights, and some vice versa. The division is quite clear and, in all likelihood, is based on several genetic variants that code for neurotransmitter receptors, opening up the possibility in the future to choose the dose and stimulant for a particular genetic type.
At the start of this millennium, it became apparent that the biological imperative to sleep at least a third of a 24-hour period was excessive and unnecessary. Just as pills and condoms control the birth of children, other stimulants can rid us of the archaic legacy of the animal kingdom.
Any remedy for drowsiness should target the prefrontal cortex. Executive brain functions are especially vulnerable to sleep deprivation, and people who don't sleep much are more likely to take risks and less likely to make new or creative decisions or plan a course of action. Designer stimulants such as Modafinil and Armodafinil "revitalize" these areas and effectively reverse the negative effects of sleep deprivation. During 60 hours of wakefulness, 400 mg of Modafinil every eight hours restore reduced performance in all types of work, from the most boring to the most difficult.
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Cool, yeah. However, this is roughly identical to the restorative effects of 20 mg dextroamphetamine, or 600 mg caffeine (equivalent to about six cups of coffee). Although caffeine has a shorter half-life and must be taken every four hours or so, it is available everywhere and is quite cheap.
Any college or university student who drinks energy drinks during a session knows that designer stimulants allow for long, focused work. A far more difficult challenge for a person sitting on stimulants would be to teach grandmother how to use the phone. It is difficult enough to design a stimulant that will offer a focus without a tunnel effect - that is, without losing the ability to navigate in a wider environment and make socially determined decisions. Irritability and impatience interfere with team dynamics and social interactions, but such nuances are commonly overlooked in drug research. These issues are largely ignored amid enthusiasm for the development of sleep-reducing drugs.
In 1996, defense psychologist Martin Taylor called in a couple of volunteers and gave each of them a map. One of the two maps had a route. Anyone who had a map with a route needed to describe it accurately enough to his partner so that he could reproduce it on his map. Meanwhile, the scholars listened to their talks. In the control group of volunteers, the label on the map was often presented as a question, for example, "Do you see the park west of the roundabout?" Volunteers who took the stimulant modafinil lowered these feedback loops, instead following abrupt and uncompromising instructions: "Exit west of the roundabout, then turn left into the park." Their dialogues were shorter and they provided a less accurate map than the control volunteers. Moreover, modafinil led the subject to overestimate his capabilities. He not only performed worse on the task, but also did not notice it.
One of the reasons stimulants have become frustrating in reducing the need for sleep is because we don't understand well enough why we sleep at all. More than a hundred years of sleep deprivation research has confirmed the obvious: Sleep deprivation makes people sleepy. It reacts more slowly to external stimuli, processes information more slowly, cannot concentrate, and the tendency to fall asleep quickly when lying down in a dark room becomes the most important indicator. "Cut out." Apparently, the main function of sleep is to keep us awake throughout the day.
Since stimulants have failed to become a biological substitute for sleep, the new watchword for sleep experimenters is “efficiency: reducing the number of hours of sleep required for full functionality. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is aiming to squeeze a full night's sleep into a few hours. Soldiers on duty will have to function according to their cognitive and physiological skills, without even needing a 24-hour sleep cycle.
Nancy Westenstan, a psychologist at the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Walter Reed Institute for Army Research, is looking for ways to keep soldiers in good working order longer while trying to combat the effects of acute or chronic sleep deprivation. She argues that a person's sleep should be viewed as an important resource, like food or fuel. Working with the Navy, Westenstan is not trying to create a super soldier who will never sleep. She doesn't even try to improve the performance of the soldiers - they are already the elite. Everyone needs to sleep, at least sometimes. But the theater of war requires soldiers to be awake and alert for as long as possible.
Although the US Army and Air Force have a long history of using stimulants - this is where modafinil and dextroamphetamine were invented, used for 24-hour flights - the Marines generally do not accept any pharmacological intervention. Like Westensten, Chris Burka of Advanced Brain Monitoring, one of DARPA's research partners, says he is wary of stimulants. "Sooner or later some stimulant appears, seems to work well and attracts interest, and then no one hears about it anymore, because it has limitations and problems."
Some failed Air Force missions have drawn attention to the danger of amphetamine-induced paranoia. Less than a decade after the US Air Force banned amphetamines in 1992, the "travel pills" were quietly returned for use by combat pilots on extended missions in Afghanistan. On April 17, 2002, Major Harry Schmidt, one of the best combat pilots, flew an F-16 fighter over Kandahar. Canadian soldiers conducted an operation under it, and dispatchers ordered Schmidt to refrain from firing. However, the pilot, under the pills, decided that he was under attack, pulled the trigger and killed four Canadian soldiers. This incident led to a field trial, but the media covered mostly pharmaceuticals.
For military personnel, ABM has developed the Somneo Sleep Trainer mask, which uses one or two hour windows for strategic sleep in a mobile sleeping environment. By cutting off ambient noise and visual distractions, the mask warms the eye area (believed to help people drift off to sleep). It is also equipped with blue light that becomes brighter as the time of sleep approaches, suppressing the sleep hormone melatonin and ensuring a calm awakening.
Ideal sleep contains several 60- and 90-minute cycles, from the slow-wave phase to the REM phase, but the 20-minute siesta is dedicated to the early immersion in the second phase of sleep. It is in the second phase of sleep that tired muscles recover faster and alertness returns to normal.
For Marines at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, four hours of sleep or less is one of the harsh conditions of basic and advanced training. The fighter's personality is nurtured by sleep deprivation, night after night, but goes against other training goals. Fighters need to be able to safely handle weapons and memorize a lot of information. Scientists have demonstrated that the cumulative effect of chronic sleep deprivation has a negative effect on learning and memory. Sleep deprivation destroys the sense of learning new skills, and command admits that this is a problem. It's not easy to wake up a dozen tired soldiers in the middle of the night and teach them to distinguish between friends and enemies.
The Somneo mask is just one of many attempts to keep the soldiers' minds clear. Another initiative includes dietary supplements. Omega-3 fatty acids, like fish oil, support performance for 48 hours without sleep - while improving focus and learning - and marines will receive more of these nutritional supplements in the future. The only question is whether short-term blocking of the negative effects of sleep deprivation can work for a long time. Doctors warn that years of sleep deprivation make us fat, weak and stupid. A growing list of ailments also points to circadian disorders as the cause.
Both the Somneo mask and supplements - in other words, darkness and diet - provide an opportunity to develop “sleep hygiene,” or a set of actions to optimize healthy sleep. They can bring the effect of a truncated night's rest to the expected rate of eight hours of satisfied snoozing. But advocates of human improvement are unhappy with the norm. Some technopanks are willing to go to great lengths to get rid of the need to sleep altogether.
Charles "Chip" Fisher, a New York City entrepreneur, sits in front of a clogged bookcase with his arms folded. He is ready to present his product to the Internet. On a polished dark wooden table in front of him lies a device consisting of a power supply that supplies electricity to two spongy yellow spheres. To start recording the instructional video, Fischer dips his sponges in a glass of water and puts them on his head just above the sideburns. The device turns on, and Fischer calmly looks into the camera as impulses penetrate his skull, the prefrontal cortex. His device - approved by the FDA back in 1991 - is strikingly different from other "miracle" products in that it actually effectively treats insomnia and other problems. It is also at the forefront of the fight against sleep.
Fisher is the director of Fisher Wallace Laboratories on Madison Avenue in New York, and has been home to the consumer electronics industry since the advent of the vacuum tube, when his father's company introduced Fisher Radio receivers. His speech includes all the details of the evening advertisements for housewives - testimonials, money-back guarantees, clips - all emotional arguments that will convince even rationalists to buy. Fisher acquired a patent for a transcranial stimulation device from brothers Saul and Bernard Lisso, electrical engineers at MIT. He believes that the body is a collection of materials, some of which are better conductive, and some of which are resistant to electricity. “We need to pierce the bone and skull, which means we need a high frequency - 15,000 Hz. Combined with 500 Hz and 15 Hz ,says Fischer. “It took 12 years to find these values. The body is affected by frequencies from 0 to 40 Hz”. Finding a cure for insomnia is Fischer's largest and fastest growing market. If someone is suffering from insomnia, they will try all the ways to sleep.
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a promising technology for treating sleep problems and improving cognitive skills. An alternating current, injected into the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, through the thinnest part of the skull, has beneficial effects like electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), its precursor. Also known as “shock therapy,” ECT has earned a notoriety for its abuse of this treatment, but remains remarkably effective in combating severe depression. We do not understand at all how it works, and even modern milder and more targeted ECTs are only used as a last resort when drug treatment no longer works. Unlike ECT, tDCS uses a very weak charge, not enough to energize neurons, but enough to slightly reverse their polarization.
Electrodes placed on the scalp above the hairline, flush with the temples, create a slight tingling effect without any strange sensations. “We use this tingling sensation to create our glamor paradigm,” says Andy McKinley of the US Air Force Laboratory. "The subject only experiences a few seconds of stimulation - not enough to feel the cognitive effects, but enough to feel them on their skin." After a half hour treatment session, he will be energetic, focused and alert. Training in visual search skills proceeds twice as fast, and subsequent sleep - if it does not occur immediately after the session - is better consolidated, awakening occurs faster, and deep sleep lasts longer. To combat insomnia, this method of treatment is used daily for two weeks. The mechanism may be sedative effects: patients taking Xanax or Valium describe their post-tCDS mood as a variation on these drugs, but without clouding.
The negative effects of the therapy on the brain have not yet been discovered, and the FDA has approved several devices (including the Fisher Wallace stimulant) for uncontrolled home use, but the long-term effects are still unknown. Neurologist Soroush Zagi and his team at Harvard School of Medicine are trying to figure out exactly how to conduct clinical trials. Once they figure it out, potential hazards will be easier to look for.
Using a slightly different technique - transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which excites neurons - neuroscientists at Duke University were able to induce slow-wave oscillations, the every-second burst of brain activity that we feel during deep sleep. By targeting the central region at the top of the head, the slow pulses reach the neural region where slow-wave sleep is generated and then propagate throughout the brain. While the Somneo mask is designed to send mask wearers to light sleep faster, TMS devices could send us straight into deep sleep at the flick of a switch. Full control of our sleep cycles can maximize the time spent in slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement, improve the physical and mental effects of sleep,while cutting sleep time in half. Your four hours of sleep will be equal to another's eight. One could read a book a week.
The only question is whether the strangeness of this idea will hinder its adoption. If society rejects sleep reduction, this does not become a biological problem; the resistance is purely cultural. The war on sleep is inextricably linked to the debate about improving people, because eight hours of consolidated sleep is the ultimate cognitive enhancement. Sleepiness and loss of concentration create a huge market for pharmaceuticals to combat this. It is difficult to imagine what it would be like if the body was recovering not only during sleep. One of the reasons we need to shut down sometimes is because our visualization system is greedy as a sense organ. Most of the information comes to us in the form of pictures. Sleep glucose metabolism, as shown by fMRI,very different from glucose metabolism during good hours, individual regions are activated in one state or another, but not in both. As soon as we close our eyelids to sleep, a tremendous amount of energy is released. Just like planes need to land to refuel, we need to sleep so our brains are ready for the next day. A drastic reduction in sleep will require the equivalent of a refueling on the fly.
Of course, such attempts will encounter powerful cultural resistance and cries of "what is natural is not ugly." The perception of what is within the normal range dictates how much of a person's performance gain is medically acceptable and how much ethical advice awaits. Never mind that these Bell curves have changed throughout history. I don't care that we started to fight insomnia exactly since Ilyich's light bulb turned every cave into May noon.
Our modern sleeping habits have long ceased to be natural and are very different from the sleeping habits of our ancient ancestors. In the 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr of the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland conducted an experiment on the relationship between complex sleep rhythms and natural light patterns. Falling asleep at dusk and waking up at dawn, the volunteers experienced some kind of antisleep in the middle of the night - a two-hour period of meditative calm, during which prolactin levels jumped. And this is supported by historical records from pre-industrial times: the first modern English households saw “first dream” and “second dream”, and the time in between was used to pray or communicate with family members.
Human improvement is currently being driven by military imperatives, at least in the US, because civil society is more conservative in its approach. Dedicated entities like the United States Air Force's Office of Human Performance are trying to make people better at what they naturally do. Every hour of sleep takes an hour away from work, finding partners, or raising children; if sleep does not have an important adaptive function that could pay for the cost of doing nothing, it may be "the greatest mistake of the evolutionary process," says Allan Rechtschaffen, a sleep researcher at the University of Chicago.
If technologies like tDCS become safe and widely available, they will pave an alternative path to human longevity, extending our conscious lifespan by 50%. Many of us appreciate the time we spend in bed, but we spend most of our sleep unconscious - take them away and you wouldn't even notice. Well, which pill will you choose, red or blue?
Ilya Khel
