Electrophysiological measures of alertness and performance during sleep deprivation

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Sleep loss is a major problem in modern society. Many people willingly cut down on their sleep to make more time for work and social demands, while others cannot get the sleep they need because of shift work, normal aging, or sleep disorders. Sleep loss has immediate consequences for mood, alertness, productivity, and safety, leading to poor learning in schools, increased automobile accidents, and catastrophic industrial errors. The most reliable finding from experimental studies is that sleep loss leads to slowed reaction time and deficits in sustained attention. A sleepy person may be able to perform with 100 percent accuracy at times; however, they will experience lapses in attention (that is, missed or delayed responses) which occur more frequently and for longer periods of time as the degree of sleep loss worsens. Researchers do not yet fully understand the brain basis of these behavioural lapses during sleep loss. Because of the type of performance deficits observed during sleepiness, researchers theorize that these deficits are related to dysfunction of the frontal brain regions. There is also some support for this from brain imaging studies. The goal of my current research is to understand how the brain controls behaviour during sleep loss using techniques like EEG and event-related potentials as measures of arousal and attention. Following 30 hours of total sleep deprivation, we will look at patterns of brain activity during performance of tasks involving frontal lobe function (e.g., working memory or processing novel stimuli). Moreover, we will investigate brain activity immediately prior to behavioural lapses in order to predict performance failure. We also aim to identify factors that predict who will be most vulnerable or resilient to sleep loss (e.g., age, gender, experience with sleep loss). Understanding how the brain controls rapid fluctuations in arousal and attention during a sleep loss challenge will improve our understanding of the role of sleep in waking function, and our understanding of brain function in general. Moreover, this research will lead to practical innovations for improving human productivity and safety under conditions of sleepiness.