Does your full schedule eat into how much you sleep at night? Are you frequently in noisy areas? Have you ever thought that maybe your sleep deprivation and surroundings (even if you can function well) are impacting your short-term performance and long-term health? Well, it is. And science can prove it.

Dr. Mathias Basner -- an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine-- who spent the past two decades researching how sleep and noise impact your cognitive functions (short-term performance) and long-term health, shares startling research findings that you might want to know.Among other things, Basner's research showed that at six hours of sleep per night, you will reach similar cognitive decline levels to those who do not sleep for a full night after 10-12 days, and at four hours per night, you will reach this level after five to seven days.The brain, while sleeping, performs critical functions, including emotional processing and information triaging. Basner shared that one of the hottest theories right now is that sleep allows for brain plasticity, meaning your brain's ability to modify its neural network connections or, in other words: rewire itself. If brain plasticity is impaired, you experience lowered ability to focus, memory problems, higher emotional instabilities, etc...And that's just the tip of the iceberg... think about how this affects your experience of life and effectiveness as a leader.Tune in to get the full conversation and learn about:

Clarity of the mind: effective leadershipEmotional IntelligenceThe role of sleep in your life and for your bodyHow sleep deprivation may be impacting your ability to lead effectivelyShort-term effects of sleep deprivationHow sleep impacts cognitive functionsSleep deprivation research findingsHow noise impacts your health short and long termResearch findings on brain plasticityThe trap (hint: blissful ignorance)What is the optimum sleep amount per nightKey workarounds if you can't get enough sleep

Dr. Mathias Basner's biography:

Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MSc is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His primary research interests concern the effects of sleep loss on neurobehavioral and cognitive functions, population studies on sleep time and waking activities, the effects of traffic noise on sleep and health, and astronaut behavioral health on long-duration space missions. These research areas overlap widely. Basner has published more than 80 journal articles and reviewed articles for more than 80 scientific journals. He is currently on the editorial board of the journals Sleep Health and Frontiers in Physiology.

Between 1999 and 2008, Basner conducted several large-scale laboratory and field studies on the effects of traffic noise on sleep at the German Aerospace Center. For this research, Basner was awarded the German Aerospace Center Research Award in 2007 and the Science Award of the German Academy for Aviation and Travel Medicine in 2010. Basner developed an ECG-based algorithm for the automatic identification of autonomic activations associated with cortical arousal that was used in several field studies to non-invasively assess the effects of aircraft noise on sleep. He is currently funded by the FAA to obtain current exposure-response functions describing the effects of aircraft noise on sleep for the United States. Basner has been an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the effects of traffic noise on sleep and health on a number of occasions. He performed a systematic evidence review on the effects of noise on sleep for the recently published revision of WHO's Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region.

Basner is currently President of the International Commission of Biological Effects of Noise (ICBE...