Fighting Sleep at Night: Brain Correlates and Vulnerability to Sleep Loss.
Ann Neurol
; 78(2): 235-47, 2015 Aug.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25940842
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
Even though wakefulness at night leads to profound performance deterioration and is regularly experienced by shift workers, its cerebral correlates remain virtually unexplored.METHODS:
We assessed brain activity in young healthy adults during a vigilant attention task under high and low sleep pressure during night-time, coinciding with strongest circadian sleep drive. We examined sleep-loss-related attentional vulnerability by considering a PERIOD3 polymorphism presumably impacting on sleep homeostasis.RESULTS:
Our results link higher sleep-loss-related attentional vulnerability to cortical and subcortical deactivation patterns during slow reaction times (i.e., suboptimal vigilant attention). Concomitantly, thalamic regions were progressively less recruited with time-on-task and functionally less connected to task-related and arousal-promoting brain regions in those volunteers showing higher attentional instability in their behavior. The data further suggest that the latter is linked to shifts into a task-inactive default-mode network in between task-relevant stimulus occurrence.INTERPRETATION:
We provide a multifaceted view on cerebral correlates of sleep loss at night and propose that genetic predisposition entails differential cerebral coping mechanisms, potentially compromising adequate performance during night work.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Arousal
/
Reaction Time
/
Attention
/
Sleep Deprivation
/
Brain
/
Circadian Rhythm
/
Period Circadian Proteins
Limits:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Ann Neurol
Year:
2015
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country: