Caffeine can’t replace sleep: Research shows caffeine improves attention but not complex thinking after sleep deprivation

There is no denying the importance of sleep. Everyone feels better after a good night of sleep, and lack of sleep can have profoundly negative effects on both the body and the brain. So what can be done to substitute for a lack of sleep? Put another way, how can you get less sleep and still perform at your peak? As a psychologist who studies the ways in which sleep benefits memory, I’m also interested in how sleep deprivation harms memory and cognition. After some initial research on sleep deprivation and false confessions, my students at Michigan State University’s Sleep and Learning Lab and ...