The Effects of Modafinil, Caffeine, and Dextroamphetamine on Judgments of Simple Versus Complex Emotional Expressions Following Sleep Deprivation

Abstract

Cognitive abilities such as vigilance, attention, memory, and executive functioning can be degraded significantly following extended periods of wakefulness. Although much evidence suggests that sleep-loss induced deficits in alertness and vigilance can be reversed or mitigated by stimulants such as caffeine, it is not clear how these compounds may affect other higher level cognitive processes such as emotional perception and judgment. Following 47 h of sleep deprivation, the study examined the effect of three stimulant medications (modafinil 400 mg, dextroamphetamine 20 mg, caffeine 600 mg) or placebo on the ability of 54 healthy participants to discriminate and label simple emotional expressions versus complex affect blends (created by morphing photographs of two different affective facial expressions). For simple affective faces, neither sleep loss nor stimulant medications made any difference on the accuracy of judgments. In contrast, for complex emotion blends, all three stimulant medications significantly improved the ability to discriminate subtle aspects of emotion correctly relative to placebo, but did not differ from one another. These findings suggest that all three stimulant medications are effective at restoring some aspects of subtle affective perception.

Sleep Deprivation Biases the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Economic Preferences

“…This is particularly relevant in light of increasing number of persons seeking to maintain performance when sleepdeprived by taking stimulants. Stimulants may improve vigilance but their influence on other aspects of cognition, such as decision making, is less clear (Gottselig et al, 2006;Killgore et al, 2007Killgore et al, , 2008Huck et al, 2008). Our findings that SD shapes decision preferences independent of its effects on vigilance suggest that the traditional countermeasures may be ineffective in ameliorating the decision biases engendered by limited sleep.…”

Social interactions, emotion and sleep: A systematic review and research agenda

“…Using schematic images, Dushenko and Sterman [51] also found impaired facial recognition performance. However, neither of these two studies or Huck et al [52] reported effects on specific emotions. Sleep loss seems to impair the processing of emotion from faces, and this effect seems most apparent with more complex tasks.…”

“…Both of these studies were interested in hemispheric differences. In general task performance was impaired following sleep loss, and improved following REM In an emotion categorization task, Huck et al [52] found no effects of sleep loss on simple emotion recognition, although complex emotion recognition was significantly affected. Stimulant medications were found to improve recognition of complex emotions following sleep deprivation.…”

“…Working memory[22] and trait anxiety[23] have both been identified as factors which modify the effects of sleep loss on neural responses. Future studies should investigate the reasons for these different reactions to emotional images in greater depth.With emotional faces, Huck et al[52] reported no effects on basic emotion recognition, and Motomura et al[35] found no effects with button responses to target stimuli. However, Huck et al[52] reported effects of sleep loss on complex emotion recognition, and Van Der Helm et al[34] found impairments in intensity ratings of subtle, mid-intensity ambiguous, emotional images.…”

Modafinil effects on cognition and emotion in schizophrenia and its neurochemical modulation in the brain

“…In contrast, for complex emotion blends, modafinil significantly improved the ability to discriminate subtle aspects of emotion correctly relative to placebo. These findings suggest that modafinil is effective at restoring some aspects of subtle affective perception (Huck et al, 2008).…”