Dr. Sophie Bostock

Can we remember things?

It's thought that the working memory centers of the brain and the hippocampus, they effectively act a bit like a sponge.

And during sleep, we consolidate new information that we're trying to learn.

We move it from our tiny little hippocampus into the much larger cortex.

So when we don't get enough sleep, A, we don't recall things, but we also don't free up more capacity for learning.

We know that there's an incredibly close link between sleep and mental health.

We've got this bidirectional relationship.

So if you want to improve someone's mental health, improve their sleep.

But if we go the other way and we take sleep away...

then we know that there's an increased risk of anxiety, of depression, of paranoia, hallucinations.

Doesn't sound good.

Well, Alan, it's not a pretty picture.

I think if I had not had any sleep for seven days, everything in my body and my brain is crying out for sleep.

There is no longer a category in the Guinness World Records for people who've stayed awake for the longest.

But when this was allowed, they had to play handheld games.

They had to be kept awake by external forces because everything about your biology is telling you to sleep.

It's not really ethical to do this experiment.

That's the issue.

I am confident that our biology is going to take over, even though you've told people to stay awake.

But if it were to happen, Dirk's going to tell you the consequences.