Adding Hours to the Day?

By | January 4, 2008
4 Comments

Next time Stephen packs up his family for one of those all-nighter cross-country excursions, maybe he will benefit from this development:

As the line between science fiction and reality becomes increasingly blurry, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has always led the pack in terms of cool, weird, wacky and frightening innovations. This time Darpa-funded scientists have found a drug that eliminates sleepiness with a nasal spray of a key brain hormone. The spray has worked well in lab experiments, with no apparent side effects. The hope is that the hormone will serve as a promising sleep-replacement drug in humans.

The spray contains a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A. In tests, monkeys suffering from sleep deprivation were treated with the substance and were subsequently able to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. Darpa is no doubt interested in the spray for it’s promise of keeping soldiers awake and alert during battle, but for those suffering from narcolepsy, the discovery may offers a potential treatment. Even those with less severe sleep disorders may be interested. According to the National Sleep Foundation, than 70 percent of Americans get less than the generally recommended eight hours of sleep per night and consequently suffer some type of sleep-deprivation symptoms.

I, for one, have about a six-cup daily coffee habit that I would like to shake. I would go cold turkey, but I don’t think I could take three weeks or so of being (alternately) comatose and psychotic. Maybe this stuff could help?

As there are no side-effects (yet identified), I wonder what possibilities there are for long-term use? You want to talk about kicking the habit — could those who are so inclined kick the sleep “habit” once and for all? One could potentially add north of 25% productive (or fun) time to one’s day. Second career, night school, hobbies — the possibilities are intriguing.

If this stuff were to become readily available, I can see it being widely used. But given the option, would people give up sleep altogether?

Would you?

  • Gramarye

    If I could give up sleep with no biological consequences at all, I certainly would. That’s 7-8 extra hours a day for reading or writing or catching up on TV shows I’ve got recorded and never watched.

    Following Speculist and KurzweilAI and Technology Review can cure one of a lot of cynicism about what’s possible and what’s not, but I have to say that this one strikes me as one of the most out there I’ve seen. I can see some kind of drug that might let someone go 30 or 36 hours without sleep instead of 18. The idea that you could have one that would effectively replicate sleep so well as to be a viable permanent replacement, however, still runs up against the boundaries of my suspension of disbelief.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    I don’t think anyone is suggesting that this hormone spray will actually provide that capability. I’m just asking what if.

  • MikeD

    I like sleep. I would like to have more awareness of my dream state. There have been times when I wake up and remember the lucid dream state – how incredible it would be to have more control over that workspace. I honestly do not feel that sleep is wasted time. Technology is almost able to provide immersive virtual worlds, the dream experience does the same thing without external hardware. Maybe this isn’t a popular idea in a space where technology is so revered? I believe the brain is a computation device that we have not yet fully exercised to potential. Consider how your PC hardware can run various OS or how the current OS can be optimized for different kinds of performance (desktop/server/etc). Now imagine the brain hardware having similar software tweaking potential. Whether we do this via pharmacology or meat-to-silicon enhancement, we’ll learn much in the process.

  • Stephen Gordon

    Even if there was no physical down-side I wouldn’t want to give up sleep altogether.

    But yeah, there are times that being able to go without sleep without sleepiness would be very good. All-night drives are the prime example.