Robust stability of trait-like vulnerability or resilience to common types of sleep deprivation in a large sample of adults

Abstract

Study Objectives Sleep loss produces large individual differences in neurobehavioral responses, with marked vulnerability or resilience among individuals. Such differences are stable with repeated exposures to acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) or chronic sleep restriction (SR) within short (weeks) and long (years) intervals. Whether trait-like responses are observed to commonly experienced types of sleep loss and across various demographically defined groups remains unknown. Methods Eighty-three adults completed two baseline nights (10 h–12 h time-in-bed, TIB) followed by five 4 h TIB SR nights or 36 h TSD. Participants then received four 12-h TIB recovery nights followed by five SR nights or 36 h TSD, in counterbalanced order to the first sleep loss sequence. Neurobehavioral tests were completed every 2 h during wakefulness. Results Participants who displayed neurobehavioral vulnerability to TSD displayed vulnerability to SR, evidenced by substantial to near perfect intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs; 78%–91% across measures). Sex, race, age, body mass index (BMI), season, and sleep loss order did not impact ICCs significantly. Individuals exhibited significant consistency of responses within, but not between, performance and self-reported domains. Conclusions Using the largest, most diverse sample to date, we demonstrate for the first time the remarkable stability of phenotypic neurobehavioral responses to commonly experienced sleep loss types, across demographic variables and different performance and self-reported measures. Since sex, race, age, BMI, and season did not affect ICCs, these variables are not useful for determining stability of responses to sleep loss, underscoring the criticality of biological predictors. Our findings inform mathematical models and are relevant for the general population and military and health professions.

Changes in Subjective Motivation and Effort During Sleep Restriction Moderate Interindividual Differences in Attentional Performance in Healthy Young Men

“…24,26 Interindividual phenotypic vulnerability to sleep loss predicts 58-68% of overall variance in lapses on the PVT. 15,25,27 False starts during total sleep deprivation also demonstrate large phenotypic variability 28 and a progressively increasing standard error of the mean. 26 Therefore, while false starts and lapses are more numerous following sleep loss, there is often greater variability between individuals after sleep loss compared to full rest.…”

Caloric and Macronutrient Intake and Meal Timing Responses to Repeated Sleep Restriction Exposures Separated by Varying Intervening Recovery Nights in Healthy Adults

“…In addition, the current study was a between-subjects design with relatively small sample sizes in each randomized condition group. Future studies are needed to confirm these findings in larger, more representative samples; the use of a within-subjects, cross-over design would improve statistical power and control for the large inter-individual differences we have observed in responses to sleep restriction [30,35,38,53]. However, as previously mentioned, these protocols using within-subjects design are difficult to implement and costly given the lengthy time commitment required.…”

“…Figure 1 depicts an overview of the full study protocol. We selected a sleep restriction paradigm consisting of 4 h TIB for five consecutive nights since this degree of sleep loss produces cumulative neurobehavioral deficits in most healthy adults [3,4,[33][34][35] and is within the range of sleep loss that occurs as a result of societal or lifestyle factors [2,3,9]. The control condition involved similar procedures as the experimental conditions except that participants were allowed 10 h TIB each night for sleep (from 22:00 to 08:00) during the in-laboratory stay.…”

Impaired Vigilant Attention Partly Accounts for Inhibition Control Deficits After Total Sleep Deprivation and Partial Sleep Restriction

“…These results confirm our hypothesis that both TSD and PSR on average impair an individual’s level of vigilant attention and are consistent with the results of most previous studies. 2 , 7 , 8 , 66–70 …”