Interindividual Differences in Neurobehavioral Performance in Response to Increasing Homeostatic Sleep Pressure

Abstract

Neurobehavioral function deteriorates with increasing homeostatic sleep pressure during wakefulness. It has been claimed that some individuals exhibit a quicker rate of such deterioration than others, thus being more vulnerable than others to the detrimental impact of increasing homeostatic sleep pressure. Evidence supporting the claim, however, has been limited by methodological issues. To overcome these limitations, the current study used a 12-calendar-day, 28-h forced desynchrony (FD) protocol (sleep:wake period = 1:2) to study individual differences in the rate of change in neurobehavioral performance with increasing homeostatic sleep pressure. Neurobehavioral performance was assessed with a psychomotor vigilance task and a serial addition subtraction task. A significant performance decline on both tasks was revealed within as short as 17 h of wakefulness. The rates of decline of individual performance trajectories were, however, not different from the group average rate. This suggests that individuals are not differentially vulnerable to the detrimental impact of increasing homeostatic sleep pressure.

Sleep, Wake and Phase Dependent Changes in Neurobehavioral Function under Forced Desynchrony

“…23 Results on tasks other than PVT are reported elsewhere. [24][25][26] Due to the wake extension in the sleep-restricted protocol (23.33 h sched-the sleep-restricted protocol (23.33 h scheduled wakefulness), there were 2 extra testing sessions in this protocol compared to the standard protocol (18.67 h scheduled wakefulness). All testing sessions were conducted individually in each participant's lounge room with participants seated in front of a blank wall in order to avoid distractions.…”

Working around the Clock: Is a Person’s Endogenous Circadian Timing for Optimal Neurobehavioral Functioning Inherently Task-Dependent?

“…This is mathematically and statistically complicated and prone to misestimation of rhythm parameters [35]. The problem is compounded by the task-dependence of vulnerability to neurobehavioral impairment due to sleep loss [36,37], which may be mediated by use-dependent, pathwayspecific degradation of neuronal processing [38] and implies that there are task-specific differences in the impact of the homeostatic process [39]. These issues can be overcome by explicitly accounting for inter-individual variability during data analysis [7] but, to date, that approach has not been applied to the evaluation of putative task differences tied to circadian rhythmicity.…”

Time-of-day and days-on-shift predict increased fatigue over two-week offshore day-shifts

“…Previously, it has been suggested that the rate at which fatigue accumulates across the day varies as a function of prior sleep loss, consistent with the principles that: (1) acute and chronic sleep loss increase fatigue levels and that (2) high sleep loss increases the rate at which fatigue accumulates across the waking period (Matthews et al, 2012b). Some recently published laboratory studies have suggested that this increased fatigue accumulation rate is due to an interaction between circadian and homeostatic sleep/wake drives (Kosmadopoulos et al, 2017;Matthews et al, 2012aMatthews et al, , 2012bZhou et al, 2010). Moreover, these studies suggest that considering this interaction is necessary for the development of better fatigue-risk prediction models.…”