Ben W.

"The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Brain and Behavior." Sarah Ledoux. December 14, 2009. brynmawr.edu.

In order for your body to continue functioning, you need to sleep. Your brain has to rest and the only time for it to rest is when you are sleeping. Muscles can continue working without sleep as long as they are resting. Eventually, enough sleep deprivation can lead to death.
In this experiment, the independent variable is how long the person stays awake. The dependent variable is the damage it does to the body, the brain especially. Although this is not an actual experiment, the tests have come up with the conclusion that the less sleep you get, the worse your behavior is because of the deterioration of the brain. The only way this experiment to be improved is to test people on how much sleep they get and what it does to their brain. This is not the best experiment because it is taking other experiments and using those conclusions to make theirs. A good follow-up would be to see how much sleep a person needs.