the.com/wakefulness
the daily verdict your brain casts before you've earned a single thought
means The state of being awake and alert rather than asleep or drowsy.
from Built from the Old English word "wacian," meaning to be awake or to watch — the same root that gives us "watch" and "wake." Add the suffix "-ful" (full of) and "-ness" (the state of), and you get a tidy stack: the condition of being full of wakefulness. The "wak-" root traces back through Germanic to a Proto-Indo-European source possibly meaning "to be lively or vigorous," which is also thought to be a distant cousin of Latin "vigil" (watchful) — so to be wakeful and to keep vigil share old, attentive blood.
- chemical switch
- Orexin neurons flip you awake; their loss causes narcolepsy
- record holder
- Randy Gardner stayed awake 11 days in 1963
- adenosine debt
- Sleepiness is a molecule piling up all day
- caffeine trick
- It blocks adenosine, not energy you don't have
- microsleeps
- Exhausted brains nap for seconds, eyes open
fatal familial insomnia — genetic disorder causing progressive inability to sleep, leading to death within 7-36 months
modafinil provigil — fda-approved wakefulness-promoting drug used for narcolepsy and shift work sleep disorder