[UA] [OT] Sleep Deprivation

[Frank Lohmann]

"Liam Astley" <Dogzilla at btinternet.com> wrote:

> hmm, sleep deprivation. is it true you start to hallucinate if you don't get
> enough sleep? 

Well... kind of. Most of my friends, as well as me, experienced the effects of 
sleep deprivation while in the final stages of writing our "Diplom" - thesises. 
It kind of varied from person to person, and we usually joked about the 
different effects we would get. One of my friends started to constantly percieve 
movement or motion just at the edge of his field of vision - of course, there 
was nothing there, but it freaked him out regularly when he was staying late at 
University and had about the whole floor of his institute all for himself... In 
the finals stages, he started to see (I kid you not) kittens, which was all 
funny by itself, because at about the same time Sluggy Freelance had the 
"Kitten" series on... 8)

		http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=000626
		
Anyway, my other friend started to jump at imaginary sounds and sometimes 
responded to dialogues that nobody else heard or that had been going on hours 
before. Me, I had some wierd perception bending episodes, where - like, when 
walkin into a room - everything from the corners to the cabinets and desks did 
not quite seem rectangular anymore. I even had some kind of strange experience 
where I could see my fingers typing on the keyboard, but my mind was too tired 
to read what they wrote on the screen, or to think about what was being written 
there - kind of like automatic writing. As it is, these parts ended up being 
some of the best parts of my thesis, so it seems my subconcious is a much better 
physicist than I am - figures... 8( 

Otherwise, I can second the strange walking feeling, especially with staircases, 
and susceptibility to caffeine, sugar and nicotine that Mark Fender talked 
about. I can also second his observation on buses (or trains), only for me it 
was a bunch of Goths, and I now know everything I'll never need about styling my 
hair with hairspray and a toothbrush... 8)

Cheers!
	Frank
-- 
Frank Cord Lohmann           
GEOMAR - Forschungszentrum fuer marine Geowissenschaften 
Wischhofstr. 1-3   24148 Kiel   Germany 
NEW PHONE NUMBER!: +49 431 600 2336



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