Overview
Randy Gardner (born c. 1946) is an American from San Diego, California, who set the record for the longest amount of time a human has gone without sleep. In December 1963/January 1964, 17-year-old Gardner stayed awake for 11 days and 25 minutes (264.4 hours), breaking the previous record of 260 hours held by Tom Rounds.
Gardner's record attempt was attended by Stanford sleep researcher Dr. William C. Dement, while …
Health effects
It has been claimed that Gardner's experiment demonstrated that extreme sleep deprivation has little effect, other than the mood changes associated with tiredness, primarily due to a report by researcher William Dement, who stated that on the tenth day of the experiment, Gardner had been, among other things, able to beat Dement at pinball. However, Lt. Cmdr. John J. Ross, who monitored his health, reported serious cognitive and behavioral changes. These included moodi…
Recovery
Gardner's sleep recovery was observed by sleep researchers who noted changes in sleep structure during post-deprivation recovery. After completing his record, Gardner slept for 14 hours and 40 minutes, awoke naturally around 8:40 p.m., and stayed awake until about 7:30 p.m. the next day, when he slept an additional ten and a half hours. Gardner appeared to have fully recovered from his loss of sleep, with follow up sleep recordings taken one, six, and ten weeks a…
Subsequent record information
According to news reports, Gardner's record has been broken a number of times. Some of these cases are described below for comparison. Gardner's case still stands out, however, because it has been so extensively documented. It is difficult to determine the accuracy of a sleep deprivation period unless the participant is carefully observed to detect short microsleeps, which the participant might not even notice. Also, records for voluntary sleep deprivation are no longer …
See also
• Sleep deprivation
Further reading
• Sigrid Veasey; Raymond Rosen; Barbara Barzansky; Ilene Rosen & Judith Owens (2002). "Sleep Loss and Fatigue in Residency Training". JAMA. 288 (9): 1116–1124. doi:10.1001/jama.288.9.1116. PMID 12204082.
• McGrann, S; et al. (2008). "Sleep deprivation effects within a non zeitgeiber environment: A Grounded theory Analysis". British Journal of Psychology. 14 (3).
External links
• Sleep Deprivation, Psychosis and Mental Efficiency - article from Psychiatric Times noting Gardner and Tripp cases
• Is Sleep Essential?, An examination of available evidence of whether sleep is a biological necessity.
• [1]->PBS website [2]->Apple podcast [3]->transcript of PBS Hidden Brain Podcast with Randy Gardner (54 minutes)