🔄FROM THE ARCHIVE: Seconds-long periods of sleep, known as “microsleep,” are common during mundane tasks like driving. While these unintended brain naps can be difficult to control, getting adequate sleep is the key to preventing them.
Have you ever spaced out during a meeting, but been jolted back to reality by the sound of your boss calling your name a few times? If you’ve ever been in this awkward situation, you might have experienced “microsleep.”
Researchers don’t fully understand why certain parts of our brain switch off throughout the day. But they have found the states of sleep and wakefulness aren’t as cut and dry as we might assume. And although fatigue does seem to prime the brain for microsleep, even well-rested people do it — a lot.published in 2012, participants who got a good night’s sleep played what may be the world’s most boring computer game — tracking a moving target on a monitor with a joystick.
. The accident, which killed seven people and injured 62 more, was the worst train accident that the UK had seen in recent memory. Other disasters tied to microsleep include the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident, the 2009 AirFrance Flight 447 crash and the 2003 Waterfall train disaster. But surprisingly, during these moments of microsleep, activity in parts of the brain responsible for paying attention ramped up. Activation in these regions are likely our brain’s way of staying awake and preventing us from fully succumbing to the urge to sleep. And it might explain why many people can still perform tasks in auto-pilot mode, even though a key part of their brain is asleep.
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