Lack of Sleep and Paranoia - Why?

[DrLiver]

It’s 10pm and I’m about to spend the night on an assignment due tomorrow; so that got me thinking:

I always heared that serious lack of sleep (I’m talking about staying awake for days not about getting insufficient sleep each night) causes paranoia; one of the stories I heared was about a radio guy who tried to break some on-air record and became paranoid and started hearing voices after something like two or three days.(of course, I have no cite for that…but trust me, I’m a honest person)

So, is that true? and if so, why?
and is there any other serious stuff that can happen (excluding except falling asleep while driving, or while performing another dangerous task)

[DrLiver]

oh, come on teeming millions…no one wants to fight my ignorance?

[sivispacem]

It’s very true and very well established that an extreme lack of sleep causes your brain to basically begin going haywire. About 6-7 days in the real fun begins, hallucinations, hearing voices, paranoia - the works. I think the record is held by a college student who made it about 10 days or so, and before he gave in was experiencing the equivelent of a very, very intense acid trip.

Conceivably if someone was kept awake long enough they might become clinically insane, however that would have to entail extraordinary measures acted by an outside force - unless some entity was keeping you awake you’d fall asleep before you went bonkers. Nazis might’ve done something along these lines, but I’m not sure

Why this happens isn’t known down to the molecular level, but essential your brain needs the rest and reorganization time that sleep gives it, so without it things begin to malfunction and neurons fire randomly - the same general effect drugs have.

[Doctor_Jackson]

According to the Scientific American website at http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=0000F879-8E01-1CD1-B4A8809EC588EEDF&catID=3 the answer is:

J. Christian Gillin, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, conducts research on sleep, chronobiology and mood disorders. He supplies the following answer.
The easy experimental answer to this question is 264 hours (about 11 days). In 1965, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old high school student, set this apparent world-record for a science fair. Several other normal research subjects have remained awake for eight to 10 days in carefully monitored experiments. None of these individuals experienced serious medical, neurological, physiological or psychiatric problems. On the other hand, all of them showed progressive and significant deficits in concentration, motivation, perception and other higher mental processes as the duration of sleep deprivation increased. Nevertheless, all experimental subjects recovered to relative normality within one or two nights of recovery sleep. Other anecdotal reports describe soldiers staying awake for four days in battle, or unmedicated patients with mania going without sleep for three to four days.