Lack of sleep can cause false memories When people suffer from sleep deprivation, they tend to misremember details of events, a new study finds.

Distorted memory can have serious consequences in areas such as criminal justice, where eyewitness misidentifications are thought to be the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States.

The study, published online in Psychological Science, finds that participants deprived of a night sleep were more likely to flub the details of a simulated burglary they were shown in a series of images.

�We found memory distortion is greater after sleep deprivation,� say co-investigator Kimberly Fenn, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University. �And people are getting less sleep each night than they ever have.�

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls insufficient sleep an epidemic and says it linked to vehicle crashes, industrial disasters, and chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

The researchers conducted experiments to gauge the effect of insufficient sleep on memory. The results: Participants who were kept awake for 24 hours�and even those who got five or fewer hours of sleep�were more likely to mix up event details than participants who were well rested.

�People who repeatedly get low amounts of sleep every night could be more prone in the long run to develop these forms of memory distortion,� Fenn say. �It not just a full night of sleep deprivation that puts them at risk.�