Study examines lack of sleep at Thon


Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998	Study examines lack of sleep at Thon By DAVID ANDREWS Collegian Staff Writer By 9 a.m. Sunday, University professor Nancy Records had them right where she wanted them -- in a state of total sleep deprivation. Dancers in the 1998 Interfraternity Council/Panhellenic Dance Marathon had been on the dance floor for 38 hours, and most had been awake for 45. Partners Sam Chapman and Gretchen Gierach, like many others, had passed through states of complete exhaustion and relative alertness. "I went through cycles," Chapman (senior-biology) said. "It was like a roller coaster." For Records, assistant professor of communication disorders, such an ordeal provided the uncommon chance to study the functionings of people who had not slept for nearly two days.
*"This is a unique opportunity. Very few people want to go two days without sleep."* - Nancy Records, assistant professor of communication disorders	About the time Records' sleep deprivation study began Sunday morning, Gierach (senior-biobehavioral health) said she felt lucid enough to attend a class. Then she went back near the EMT station to take part in the experiment. The experimenter asked her to retell stories and determine if certain words were real or invented. When asked to repeat a series of numbers, Gierach found she wasn't as awake as she had imagined. "When I did that, I knew that I wouldn't have been able to go to class," she said. Records and her 10 assistants examined the cognitive skills of about 36 people, hoping to compare the results to the functioning of a brain with aphasia, a brain condition that afflicts people after a stroke.
`1998 IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon coverage`	Records' hypothesis is that people who are sleep deprived, like people with aphasia, have greater difficulty accessing knowledge stored in the brain. This theory runs against others theorizing that parts of the memory and cognitive skills are destroyed in aphasia. Aphasia is inconsistent, she said -- people with the affliction remember certain words or facts at some times, but not at others, she said. This may be because the brain becomes inefficient at bringing up knowledge, not having enough "cognitive resources" to function properly, Records said. The same problems may happen to someone who is sleep deprived, she said. Records has taken advantage of dance marathon for three straight years, changing the questions each time for different results.
`Memories from Thon photo page`	"This is a unique opportunity," she said. "Very few people want to go two days without sleep." During the experiment, Gierach said she found herself answering questions incorrectly that she would normally have gotten right. One of the 10 sections of the test, in which she was asked to determine if a word was real or made-up without reading it aloud, was particularly difficult, she said. But Records said though the results will not be in until the summer, the experimenters said most of the subjects performed fairly well on the tests. Such a result would not support her hypothesis, she said. If the latest data does not support her theory, Records said she may not be back next year. "I will be sorry if we don't go back," Records said. "This is one of my favorite subjects."