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Comment by pharrington | Hacker News Reader

Your anecdotal experience is far from uncommon. For the article to even imply this as any sort of cure for depression, though, massively misinterprets the small amount of research on this.

edit: And as a sibling comment mentioned, we do know that cognition suffers immensely when sleep-deprived.

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I was thinking maybe the poorer cognition actually helps relieve the depression. Because a lot of depressives overthink (some past event, etc).

While you are certainly less able to overthink in that state, the euphoria is a discrete phenomenon. The euphoria and poorer high-level cognition seem not to be caused by each other (obviously discounting any cyclical feedback effects once they're both in play), but instead caused by the same process.

>discrete

'Distinct' you mean?

If only there was a way to get the euphoria without the reduction in function, huh?

I mean discrete.

Not so long ago I read a similar article. This small piece of research is just that - a piece, and I'm going to guess the actual effect will be seen once we combine the pieces. Sleep deprivation itself obviously isn't sustainable, but other things might just be.

Other sleep-related studies show things like decreasing REM sleep helps as well. Some psychiatric drugs already have this effect on people, in fact. Obviously, going without sleep is going to do this. Granted, this is all speculation from the bits I've read, but it would make sense - as well as why some folks find weed to help greatly: taken regularly, it often decreases dreaming.

I'd provide the link, but I can't remember where I read it. I've seen a few articles reporting on this particular thing.

Yea, it works when you want to trade cognition for action. If I don't need to make any tricky decisions, and would benefit from just moving a bunch of items forward, that's when sleep deprivation (all nighters) can work for me.

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