Morgan H.

Article: The Chemistry of Sleeplessness
Author: Anonymous
Source: Science News for Kids


In recent studies scientists have found a chemical in the brain that prevents sleep deprived people from falling asleep in every day activities. This chemical is known as dopamine. Scientists have found that when people are functioning on less sleep this chemical increases drastically to prevent falling asleep during activities. Dopamine levels are different in different people. Scientists found this out by preforming an experiment on 15 different volunteers. This experiment included letting some of them have a full nights sleep and others have to stay up all night. When the volunteers that stayed up all night were asked questions some reacted better, and faster then others. Scientists also monitored the dopamine levels in the brain during these questions and observed that the levels in some of the volunteers were higher then in others. This proves that dopamine levels are different in different people and that this chemical effects us in our every day lives.

I liked this article because I have always wondered how I can stay awake and function after having no sleep and this article answered my question. I thought this article was interesting because there is an actual chemical that controls this and not the entire brain or a part of it. My question for this article is how old were the volunteers? The reason I ask this is because the levels of dopamine could change with age.