False and distorted memories - that is what you get due to lack of sleep.

Yes! A research by Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine, examined the effects of sleep deprivation on people and found that it leads to development of false memories.

"We found memory distortion is greater after sleep deprivation," the co-investigator of the study, Kimberly Fenn, associate professor of psychology at MSU, said in a press release. "And people are getting less sleep each night than they ever have."

Sleep deprivation can lead to various health problems such as vehicular accidents apart from memory issues.

Researchers conducted experiments on sleep deprived people. They showed a series of images depicting a stimulated burglary to the participants. Some participants were kept awake for 24 hours while others slept only for 5 hours or less. The participants were told to recall details from the images.

The study findings showed that people who did not sleep at all were more likely to mix up the events from the photos and have false memories. Those who slept five hours or less also had difficulty with their memory compared to the people who got recommended amount of sleep.

"We found that under certain conditions, sleep deprivation can increase the risk of developing false memories. Specifically, sleep deprivation increased false memories in a misinformation task when participants were sleep deprived during event encoding, but did not have a significant effect when the deprivation occurred after event encoding," the study authors wrote.

Fenn said, "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. It's not just a full night of sleep deprivation that puts them at risk."

The study, 'Sleep Deprivation and False Memories,' was published in the journal, Psychological Science.