Physiological study on the impact of sleep deprivation on accuracy of odor identification

• Main Authors: Tria, Bianca Margaret C., Legaspi, Juan Alexandro V., Pepino, Abigail Anne R., Reyes, Iliana P., Villanueva, Shiela Antoinette V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2024
• Subjects: Sleep deprivation—Physiological aspects; Olfactometry; Physiology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdb_bio/71
• Institution: De La Salle University

Sleep has been one of the more essential routines of most organisms from different species that still exist today. Odor identification utilizes different cognitive functions, and sleep deprivation may further affect this. Furthermore, sleep deprivation can impair odor identification abilities which highlights both the importance of understanding how sleep affects cognitive functions. This study aimed to determine if sleep deprivation has an effect on the odor identification accuracy of an individual. Ten (10) first year medical students were subjected to a modified Brief Smell Identification Test (BSIT) during a less sleep deprived state and a more sleep deprived state. Results showed that there were more participants who identified the scents correctly when in the sleep-deprived state; however, the difference was not statistically significant. The findings may have been affected the factors such as variability in sleep deprivation levels, characteristics of study participants such as age, gender, health status, and baseline cognitive abilities can impact the results, and variations in environmental conditions such as noise levels, lighting, temperature, and air quality that may have influenced cognitive performance. Other studies suggest that sleep loss impairs one’s ability to identify common odors, but this effect did not appear to be amplified by added sleep loss after the first 24 hours.