What One All-Nighter Really Does to Your Next Day

You can stay awake all night, finish the project, and still feel completely fine the next morning. So what did the all-nighter actually cost you? We follow one imagined sleepless night, from the 11 PM "deal" to the late-morning decision to hit send. Along the way we look at real experiments on attention lapses, single neurons, memory formation, keeping your place in a task, caffeine and risky choices. The story is fictional, but the studies are real. ⏱ CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:44 11:00 PM: The deal 02:21 2:00 AM: Two forces (sleep pressure and the circadian clock) 04:12 Morning: "Functioning" and the vigilance test 09:08 9:00 AM: Memory 13:14 Later: Keeping your place 14:54 Coffee 16:57 Late morning: The decision 21:16 Afterward: What success proves 23:13 The night before 📚 STUDIES DISCUSSED • Nir Y. et al. (2017). Selective neuronal lapses precede human cognitive lapses following sleep deprivation. Nature Medicine, 23, 1474–1480. • Yoo S.-S., Hu P.T., Gujar N., Jolesz F.A., Walker M.P. (2007). A deficit in the ability to form new human memories without sleep. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 385–392. • Stepan M.E., Fenn K.M., Altmann E.M. (2019). Effects of sleep deprivation on procedural errors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(10), 1828–1833. • Stepan M.E., Altmann E.M., Fenn K.M. (2021). Caffeine selectively mitigates cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. • Venkatraman V., Huettel S.A., Chuah L.Y.M., Payne J.W., Chee M.W.L. (2011). Sleep deprivation biases the neural mechanisms underlying economic preferences. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(10), 3712–3718. • Mullette-Gillman O.A., Kurnianingsih Y.A., Liu J.C.J. (2015). Sleep deprivation alters choice strategy without altering uncertainty or loss aversion preferences. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 352. ⚠️ This video is for general education and is not medical advice. If you are struggling to stay awake, do not drive; arrange a safer way home. 🎵 MUSIC Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com): "Lightless Dawn", "Night Vigil", "Long Note Two", "Crypto", "Long Note Four", "Hidden Agenda", "Floating Cities", "Perspectives", "Clean Soul" Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... 🖼 PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATIONS Photos from NASA are in the public domain. Images from Wikimedia Commons were cropped or reframed to 16:9 for this video. • ISS images iss035e017673 (Chris Hadfield), iss022e097237, iss072e487315, iss066e109851: NASA / JSC, public domain (images.nasa.gov) • "EEG Recording Cap": Chris Hope, CC BY 2.0 • "Pyramidal hippocampal neuron 40x" and "Gyrus Dentatus 40x": MethoxyRoxy, CC BY-SA 2.5 • "NeuronGolgi": brainmaps.org, uploaded by Pr495du, CC BY 2.5 • "Hippocampus and seahorse": Prof. László Seress, CC BY-SA 1.0 • "Suprachiasmatic Nucleus" illustration: 黄雨伞, CC BY-SA 3.0 • "CajalHippocampus (modified)": Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1911), derivative by Looie496, public domain • "Classmate tests reaction to tuning fork on Randy Gardner" (1964): public domain • "Caffeine (1) 3D ball": Jynto, CC0 All via Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org). Licences: CC BY 2.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 · CC BY 2.5 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5 · CC BY-SA 1.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 · CC BY-SA 2.5 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5 · CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 🔊 SOUND EFFECTS (Wikimedia Commons) • "Dawn chorus at Glencairnie big bungalow Craigmore": DivyaCM, CC BY 4.0 • "WWS Coffeemaker": Work With Sounds / Torsten Nilsson, CC BY 4.0 • "Notification (Gravity Sound)": Gravity Sound, CC BY 4.0 • Clock, alarm clock, keyboard, telephone, page turn, highway: public domain; mouse click: CC0 CC BY 4.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 🎬 STOCK FOOTAGE Pexels (pexels.com), used under the Pexels License. Diagrams are simplified illustrations made for this video. They show the direction of reported findings, not the original data. #sleep #neuroscience #allnighter #sleepdeprivation #science