"It happens to all of us occasionally. You experience a sleepless night due to work or play, and the next day... You find yourself in a meeting, reaching for an answer to a question from your supervisor that you failed to hear because you had momentarily zoned out just as she asked it. Or you're driving home from work and realize that the exit you were supposed to take from the highway is 30 seconds behind you."
"According to a recent study at MIT and Boston University, however, such annoyance is misguided. Far from being the result of our brain's "neglect" in failing to keep us alert, the lapses of attention that we experience after a sleepless night are actually a sign that our brains are working hard to prevent damage that lost sleep-whether voluntary or otherwise-might bring about. Our brains are not punishing us for lost sleep; they're protecting us from it."
Attentional failures are brief lapses of attention more likely after nights of lost sleep, causing people to miss information, make driving errors, or forget recently seen details. During sleep, the brain clears waste with pulses of cerebrospinal fluid. Brief lapses in attention following sleep loss appear to engage a similar cleansing process. Those cleansing pulses are coupled to a brain- and body-wide state change, suggesting coordinated physiological shifts. The occurrence of attentional lapses after sleep deprivation therefore reflects an active protective mechanism. The brain sacrifices uninterrupted attention temporarily to perform maintenance that may prevent damage from accumulated metabolic waste.
Read at Psychology Today
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