One Night in the Sleep Lab

It is five o’clock in the morning. The stars and moon have faded away in the slowly brightening dark blue sky. An early bird’s song is drifting in through the open window of the control room. A couple more hours and then it is Feiermorgen, as the Germans say. 

I store the saliva sample in the fridge and quickly hurry back to my test subject. God forbid he should fall asleep - that would really mess up my data! But the worst hours are just behind us now and even though my human guinea pig has not slept for over twenty hours, he is getting livelier again, able to finish a sentence without dozing off. I re-enter the room where the poor guy is chained to the bed in an environment of eternal twilight and total isolation. Apart from contact with me, that is, and without real chains, of course - only my stern reprimand when his eyelids drop. 

All in a Night's Work
Welcome to the sleep lab. Keep your eyes open at all times! This is the motto in this room. The patients down the hall are encouraged to sleep. Yet some of them are also wide awake judging by the squiggly lines on the monitors in the control room. They are here because they can’t sleep. My subject is here to stay awake and I am a PhD student who does research on the biological clock. This means that I know very well that doing too many of these night shifts increases my risk of ending up as a patient myself, always tired yet unable to get a good night’s sleep. 

KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AT ALL TIMES!

The irony is not lost on me. But to truly understand something, especially things that are bad for you, there is no better teacher than personal experience, right? So I take another sample and count down the hours. Not aloud of course - the subject has long before lost track of time and thinks it is the early afternoon. If he were to learn that he has many more hours still to go, it might affect his motivation and thereby his performance on the cognitive tests, which are another part of the torture regiment I expose him to. And did I mention his scalp is plastered with electrodes and that he wears a rectal probe? But don’t feel bad for him, he is here voluntarily and gets paid, too. The things students are willing to do for money, right? The sun is coming up and the experiment is drawing to an end. Soon I can go to sleep myself.  

by Jan de Zeeuw, PhD Student AG Kunz
This article originally appeared December 2017 in CNS Volume 10, Issue 04, Sleep