Try to Get Some Sleep

Nightclub patrons are often sullen and quarrelsome. Overtime workers frequently have peevish dispositions. Can this bad temper be traced to lack of sleep?

In the Journal of Comparative Psychology, Drs. J. C. R. Licklider and M. E. Bunch describe a revealing experiment on rats (which are very like people in many ways). The problem was to find out how rats react to losing sleep. Rats ordinarily sleep 12 to 15 hours a day. When really sleepy, they will bed down on anything. Bright lights and loud noises do not stop them from trying.

The experimenters had to invent a fiendishly ingenious gadget for keeping their rats awake. Cylindrical treadmills revolved slowly in cells half full of water. If the rat did not keep awake, he got dunked and had to scramble back.

With a rat on each treadmill, the apparatus was set running 20 hours a day. The pace soon began to tell. The wakeful, wretched rats grew scrawny and stopped growing. After 30 sleepless days, their dispositions showed it. They snapped and bit out in all directions. Given an opportunity, they attacked and killed one another.

One test of a rat's mentality is to put him in an intricate maze half full of water, observe how quickly he finds his way out. After 50 days, the wakeful rats were dumped in such a maze. They swam feverishly, caught on to the maze, got out even faster than normal rats.

Possible moral for nightclub proprietors and bosses who work the help after hours: lack of sleep is bad for the victim's health, bad for his disposition, but does not necessarily impair his natural intelligence.

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