(Austin, TX)  --  Newly published research finds lack of sleep has a negative effect on automatic, accurate responses and can result in potentially life ending errors.

   Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin studied certain tasks performed by 49 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point over a two day period.

   Some were sleep deprived, others were not.

   The sleep deprived tended to shift from a faster, more accurate process of information categorization to a different rule-based mental process which hampered performance.

   The discovery is especially important to people in jobs that require instant responses like police officers and soldiers who frequently suffer from loss of sleep.

   The study was funded by the U.S. Army, details are published in the November issue of "Sleep."



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