Thinking of pulling a typical all-nighter to get your assignments done? Well, think again.
A recent study has found that just one night of sleep deprivation can lead to some people's brains appearing years older.
The research was recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. It stated that just one night of sleep deprivation can cause significant changes in the brain structure. It can make a brain appear similar to one after a year or two of aging.
The researchers analyzed MRI data of 134 healthy volunteers - 92 males and 42 females. The ages ranged from 19 years to 39 years from five datasets.
Total sleep deprivation with 24 hours of prolonged wakefulness.
Partial deprivation with three hours in bed for one night.
Chronic deprivation gives hours of bedtime each night five hours.
A control group slept for eight hours every night.
Participants in each group had at least one night of 'baseline sleep' where they spent eight hours in bed.
The researchers used a machine-learning algorithm trained on data from 3000 individuals to determine the brain ages.
They observed that those with total sleep deprivation showed increased brain age by 1-2 years. However, these changes could be reversible with recovery sleep.
(Input from various media sources)