in my personal sleep deprivation studies i noticed that among other things, my empathy levels would rise.
or maybe because since everything else was moving slower i had more time to be perceptive of such.


still, the same could be said about alcohol
everyone's very tuned to emotions when under the influence


edit: and after reading some of the replies it seems no one likes to sleep in this thread

It probably has to do with your attention not being as focused on the trillion trivial things going on any given moment in your life. When you tired, you aren't able to focus on the crud so much so you pick up on the little things better.

The trick is to have that kind of awareness when you are fully alert and rested so you can devote 5% of your mind to this instead of the .001% you are now.

Sleep for the weak, etc

Sorry,didn't check this for a while. I think this would be a fairly interesting area of research. Even though I started this myself, I'd be pretty sure intuition is actually an unconcious gathering of facts in front of you processed unconciously at a speed you're not in control of. I think it's a good thing in many ways that we still have some of these animal instincts, stops you getting too cocky about our own intelligence