NEW YORK: Missing sleep lately owing to family stress or extra workload at office? Get back to normal routine fast as lack of sleep can hurt your memory.

A study has found that memory distortion is greater after sleep deprivation and "people are getting less sleep each night than they ever have".

To understand this, researchers from Michigan State University and University of California, Irvine, conducted experiments to gauge the effect of insufficient sleep on memory.

They found that 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," said Kimberly Fenn, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University.

Insufficient sleep is an epidemic and linked to vehicle crashes, industrial disasters and chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, concluded the study published online in the journal Psychological Science.

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