Microsleep – an Embarrassing Situation or a Deadly One

Have you ever seen someone's head bobbing during a class lecture? Perhaps you have experienced this state of powerlessness where you feel as if the entire world is watching you, but you just simply can’t stay awake no matter what. You wake up in a fear of realizing that you just dose off right in front of a professor. The youtube video [1] demonstrates one unfortunate student who is struggling through such a situation. Sometimes this could take us to such extremes as not realizing actions that we just performed, i.e. randomly putting cereal in the refrigerator. This phenomenon is called microsleep, where a person is experiencing brief episodes of loss of attention [2]. It usually occurs in a fatigued but awake person during a monotonous task, such as sitting in a classroom or watching a computer screen. These episodes could last from a few seconds to several minutes, even while a person’s eyes remain open. Such situations could potentially lead to a misunderstanding, where a professor may interpret a sleeping student as lazy, whereas in reality the student could have actually pulled an all-nighter while studying. In a research on exhausted mice scientists monitored how 18 out of 20 neurons remained awake, causing subjects to partially fail in certain challenging tasks [3].

In more serious situations, microsleep occurs during driving, which may cause a driver to overlook a red light or shift lanes without realizing what had actually happened until several seconds later, which may already be too late. According to German Traffic Safety Advisory Board statistics about 25 percent of fatal single vehicle accidents in Germany are attributed to microsleep [4]. I remember once experiencing an uncontrollable dosing off during night driving where I woke up in a different lane a few seconds later, not remembering how the event actually occurred. In that instance of realization my heart rate had peaked up through the car roof, following by sweating and heavily protruded eyes. Having experienced it once, I since avoided it at all cause. To help drivers such as myself to avoid such dangerous situations, Siemens had developed an infrared light-emitting diode (IR-LED) to help recognize microsleep in motorists [4]. This technology uses camera with sensor at wavelength of 850 nm capable of seat occupancy recognition, among other features, to hopefully keep sleepy drivers safe on or off the road.


References:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z4ZcV0DZgQ
2. Microsleep. Retrieved from: http://www.sleep.com/content/microsleep
3. Microsleep: Brain Regions Can Take Short Naps During Wakefulness, Leading to Errors. (2011). ScienceDaily. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427131814.htm
4. Detecting drivers in microsleep with infrared LED. (2010). Retrieved from: http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-drivers-microsleep-infrared.html