Sleep deprivation makes everyone an Aspie...

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Ok, I'm reading this book called Sleepfaring by Jim Horne, which is all about sleep and what happens when you are deprived of it. Here are some of the characteristics of sleep deprivation:

- difficulty "comprehending and coping with a rapidly changing situation" (p 75)
- difficulty empathizing "with other people and detecting subtleties in their behaviour" (p 76)
- "flattened" intonation when speaking, little emotion (pp 76-77)
- lack of facial expression
- "disregard for normal social conventions" (p 80)
- "inappropriate interpersonal behaviours" (p 80)
- lose ability to "sense the feelings of others...fail to see what lies behind what someone is saying or in his or her gestures" (p 83)

I was reading it and thinking, "That reminds me of Asperger's!" I guess Aspie traits come out when a person is sleep-deprived...

Heh, that does sound very familiar.
I would speculate that the main difference between waking Aspieness and mere sleep deprivation would be how evenly the awareness is spread. Those sleep-deprivation symptoms can mainly be linked to decreased sensitivity to surroundings/situations as well as disconnection from the signals one is putting forth unconsciously. An Aspie may be equally unaware of some of those things, but for different reasons: They may have increased sensitivity to individual stimuli and/or the details may overwhelm the whole to the point of making snap judgements a chore. (I am probably not describing the entire Aspie population with any sort of accuracy, but as a subset of what is known to be personally, I hope I have said something that may make logical sense in some part of the space-time continuum somewhere... ^^')

....and when your a sleep deprived Aspie it gets even worse.

Heres another one: sometimes if im sleep-deprived, going out into bright sunshine is really uncomfortable.

Wow. If that's the case, then being in the army was the worse thng for me to do when I was young and stupid...

Seriously though, I never new that before. Gunna have to buy that book and read it now.

I'm with dracula on this one, I feel much more socially capable when I'm a little bit strung out from lack of sleep. Of course how I see myself and how I actually come across are two very different things.

I'll admit a bit of sleep deprivation seems to "perk" me up a bit in the social skills department (because I might not be so enthusiastic about dominating conversations ), usually if it's more than a little, I tend to feel awful and not really that inclined to work at handing social situations, since those require extra effort.

Other than that, I don't see sleep deprivation related to aspergers at all.

With sleep deprivation, there is a loss of inhibition, which probably accounts for feeling more sociable. Or maybe sleep deprivation for Aspies is like Ritalin for people with ADHD - it has the opposite effect on us, LOL.

No, I don't really think sleep deprivation and AS are related, but it was weird to see those similarities.

I would agree with that. I've always believed autism was nothing more than parts of the brain staying asleep while others awaken, leaving you sleepwalking. We rock and stim (or talk nonstop for some Aspies) to wake up those parts of the brain. I'm far less autistic after strong coffee, though it has a rebound effect after a few hours.

Actually some of the times I have felt most comfortable in a group of NT's has been when we have all been sleep deprived. Then I actually find they are more delibated than me and I actually come into my own as the playing field has now been leveled. I worked a shift job for a while so this was a regular occurrence on the night shifts.

I tend to be sleep deprived a lot. Maybe if I get more sleep, the AS traits will go away!

One of my friends at the Aspie social skills group party was really tired and acting autistic/wierd at first, but when he perked up he became normal and fun and alert.