Celebrities and business leaders boast about their three to four hours of sleep, claiming they just don’t need as much sleep as other people. To find out what’s different about short sleepers’ brains, U radiologist Jeff Anderson, psychologist Paula Williams and their colleagues studied brain scans of nearly 1,000 people to see how their brains are wired. For those who reported short sleep duration and no daytime dysfunction, brain patterns during the scan looked more like a person asleep than a person awake. The results suggest that short sleepers may be more efficient at the tasks the brain performs during sleep, but also that short sleepers may be drowsier than they realize.

Jeff Anderson| 801-581-4264 | j.anderson@hsc.utah.edu
Paula Williams| 801-585-6271 | paula.williams@psych.utah.edu