Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Dubious
Novosti is reporting that a Ukrainian man has not slept in twenty years. Now, as much as I'd like to believe this (I've been on a failing mission to eliminate sleep from my routine for a decade or so), I don't. Not even a little. First, there's the fact that your brain starts eating itself after a bit more than five days of wakefulness. While I appreciate that there are allegedly apparently ways of ... circumventing this ... they are not likely to happen by accident.
However. The short article reveals a rather big chink in its own credibility: the patient reports 'dozing' while attempting to fall asleep: insomniacs frequently perceive themselves not to have slept when in fact they have. This and the dubious nature of (or, actually, lack of as far as I can tell) actual medical records make me think this is crap.
We can only hope that this guy is for real and gets proper attention from proper neuroscientists, who can discover how he is doing it and share it, in convenient pill form, with me. The rest of the world too, I guess, but really just me!
However. The short article reveals a rather big chink in its own credibility: the patient reports 'dozing' while attempting to fall asleep: insomniacs frequently perceive themselves not to have slept when in fact they have. This and the dubious nature of (or, actually, lack of as far as I can tell) actual medical records make me think this is crap.
We can only hope that this guy is for real and gets proper attention from proper neuroscientists, who can discover how he is doing it and share it, in convenient pill form, with me. The rest of the world too, I guess, but really just me!
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