Chronic sleep curtailment, even without extended (>16-h) wakefulness, degrades human vigilance performance

May 23, 2018Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Long-term lack of sleep lowers human attention even without very long wakefulness

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Abstract

Chronic insufficient sleep duration equivalent to 5.6 hours of sleep opportunity per 24 hours impairs neurobehavioral performance.

Chronic short sleep duration, independent of extended wakefulness, resulted in a doubling of neurobehavioral reaction time performance.
Lapses of attention increased fivefold under conditions of chronic sleep restriction.
Self-reported alertness did not uniformly decrease despite significant impairments in performance.
Impairments in neurobehavioral performance were exacerbated during the circadian night.
No recovery of performance was observed during the circadian day, indicating persistent effects of sleep deficiency.

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Millions of individuals routinely remain awake for more than 18 h daily, which causes performance decrements. It is unknown if these functional impairments are the result of that extended wakefulness or from the associated shortened sleep durations. We therefore examined changes in objective reaction time performance and subjective alertness in a 32-d inpatient protocol in which participants were scheduled to wakefulness durations below 16 h while on a 20-h "day," with randomization into standard sleep:wake ratio (1:2) or chronic sleep restriction (CSR) ratio (1:3.3) conditions. This protocol allowed determination of the contribution of sleep deficiency independent of extended wakefulness, since individual episodes of wakefulness in the CSR condition were only 15.33 h in duration (less than the usual 16 h of wakefulness in a 24-h day) and sleep episodes were 4.67 h in duration each cycle. We found that chronic short sleep duration, even without extended wakefulness, doubled neurobehavioral reaction time performance and increased lapses of attention fivefold, yet did not uniformly decrease self-reported alertness. Further, these impairments in neurobehavioral performance were worsened during the circadian night and were not recovered during the circadian day, indicating that the deleterious effect from the homeostatic buildup of CSR is expressed even during the circadian promotion of daytime arousal. These findings reveal a fundamental aspect of human biology: Chronic insufficient sleep duration equivalent to 5.6 h of sleep opportunity per 24 h impairs neurobehavioral performance and self-assessment of alertness, even without extended wakefulness.

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Chronic sleep curtailment, even without extended (>16-h) wakefulness, degrades human vigilance performance

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