According to a study conducted by the University of California (UCLA), adults ages 59 to 82 are more resistant to total sleep deprivation than youth ages 19 to 38 . Specifically, the researchers showed that after 36 hours without sleep, older adults kept their working memory, selective attention and verbal skills almost intact.
According to Sean Drummond, co-author of the study, it is possibly because those adults who are over 59 years old in good health "are, in general, less vulnerable to different stressors, not just lack of sleep." On the other hand, from his experiments, the researcher concludes that sacrificing sleep for study or work has negative consequences , since it reduces performance, for example the night before an exam or an important presentation at the office.
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