Longest period without sleep
Depending on how one defines sleep, there are several persons who can claim the record for having gone the longest without sleep. Aside from mere curiosity, these records may prove important to various sleep theories.
1. Thai Ngoc, born 1942, has stayed awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights, according to Vietnamese news organization Thanh Nien. [6] He suffers from no apparent ill effect (other than the fact that he cannot sleep). Ngoc is mentally sound and able to carry 100kg of pig feed down a 4km road. He acquired the ability to go without sleep after a bout of fever in 1973. Some of these health claims are disputed, however.[7]
2. Randy Gardner holds the Guiness World Record for intentionally having gone the longest without sleep. In 1965, Gardner, then 18, stayed awake for 264 hours (about 11 days) for a high school science project. [8] He experienced significant deficits in concentration, motivation, perception and other higher mental processes during his sleep deprivation. However, he recovered normal cognitive functions after a few nights' sleep.
On May 25th 2007 the BBC reported that Tony Wright beat the Guiness World Record by staying awake for 11 days and nights. [9] The Guinness Book of Records has however withdrawn its backing of a sleep deprivation class because of the associated health risks.
3. People born with the rare genetic disorder Morvans fibrillary chorea or Morvans syndrome can go without sleep for several months at a time. Michel Jouvet and his colleagues in Lyon, France, studied a 27-year-old man and found he had virtually no sleep over a period of several months. During that time he did not feel sleepy or tired and did not show any disorders of mood, memory, or anxiety. Nevertheless, nearly every night between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., he experienced a 20 to 60-minute period of auditory, visual, olfactory, and somesthetic (sense of touch) hallucinations, as well as pain and vasoconstriction in his fingers and toes.[8] In recent investigations, Morvan's syndrome has been attributed to serum antibodies directed against specific potassium (K+) channels in cell and nerve membranes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Longest_period_without_sleep