Staying awake for 21 hours makes young healthy people about 8% worse at remembering words, 19% worse at remembering number sequences, and significantly slower at language tasks and reaction time tests.
Scientific Claim
Sleep deprivation for 21 hours significantly impairs cognitive performance in word memory tasks by approximately 7.8% and digit span memory tasks by 18.7% in young healthy adults, with significant slowing of processing speed in language tasks by 17.4% and psychomotor vigilance by 6.2%.
Source Excerpt
“Furthermore, deteriorations in memory tasks versus baseline appeared significant in WMT (−7.8±2.1%, p43=0.0002, t43=−3.8); SPAN (−18.7±6.1%, p43=0.002, t43=−3.0) and in speed in processing time in the language task (−17.4±4.4%, p43=0.0001, t43=−4.0) and in PVT (0.9-Pc) (−6.2±1.9%, p43=0.001, t43=−3.3) when pooled at all 3 time points (Fig. 4).”
Evidence from Studies
Supporting Studies
Single dose creatine improves cognitive performance and induces changes in cerebral high energy phosphates during sleep deprivation
The study measured cognitive performance using multiple standardized tests and found statistically significant declines in memory and processing speed after 21 hours of sleep deprivation compared to baseline.