Julian Lim

Sleep deprivation and vigilant attention.

Sleep deprivation severely compromises the ability of human beings to respond to stimuli in a timely fashion. These deficits have been attributed in large part to failures of vigilant attention, which many theorists believe forms the bedrock of the other more complex components of cognition. One of the leading paradigms used as an assay of vigilant attention is the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), a high signal‐load reaction‐time test that is extremely sensitive to sleep deprivation. Over the last twenty years, four dominant findings have emerged from the use of this paradigm. First, sleep deprivation results in an overall slowing of responses. Second, sleep deprivation increases the propensity of individuals to lapse for lengthy periods (>500 ms), as well as make errors of commission. Third, sleep deprivation enhances the time‐on‐task effect within each test bout. Finally, PVT results during extended periods of wakefulness reveal the presence of interacting circadian and homeostatic sleep drives. A theme that links these findings is the interplay of “top‐down” and “bottom‐up” attention in producing the unstable and unpredictable patterns of behavior that are the hallmark of the sleep‐deprived state.

A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Short-Term Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Variables

A substantial amount of research has been conducted in an effort to understand the impact of short-term (<48 hr) total sleep deprivation (SD) on outcomes in various cognitive domains. Despite this wealth of information, there has been disagreement on how these data should be interpreted, arising in part because the relative magnitude of effect sizes in these domains is not known. To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis to discover the effects of short-term SD on both speed and accuracy measures in 6 cognitive categories: simple attention, complex attention, working memory, processing speed, short-term memory, and reasoning. Seventy articles containing 147 cognitive tests were found that met inclusion criteria for this study. Effect sizes ranged from small and nonsignificant (reasoning accuracy: g = -0.125, 95% CI [-0.27, 0.02]) to large (lapses in simple attention: g = -0.776, 95% CI [-0.96, -0.60], p < .001). Across cognitive domains, significant differences were observed for both speed and accuracy; however, there were no differences between speed and accuracy measures within each cognitive domain. Of several moderators tested, only time awake was a significant predictor of between-studies variability, and only for accuracy measures, suggesting that heterogeneity in test characteristics may account for a significant amount of the remaining between-studies variance. The theoretical implications of these findings for the study of SD and cognition are discussed.

Functional cortical connectivity analysis of mental fatigue unmasks hemispheric asymmetry and changes in small-world networks

Changes in functional connectivity across mental states can provide richer information about human cognition than simpler univariate approaches. Here, we applied a graph theoretical approach to analyze such changes in the lower alpha (8-10 Hz) band of EEG data from 26 subjects undergoing a mentally-demanding test of sustained attention: the Psychomotor Vigilance Test. Behavior and connectivity maps were compared between the first and last 5 min of the task. Reaction times were significantly slower in the final minutes of the task, showing a clear time-on-task effect. A significant increase was observed in weighted characteristic path length, a measure of the efficiency of information transfer within the cortical network. This increase was correlated with reaction time change. Functional connectivity patterns were also estimated on the cortical surface via source localization of cortical activities in 26 predefined regions of interest. Increased characteristic path length was revealed, providing further support for the presence of a reshaped global topology in cortical connectivity networks under fatigue state. Additional analysis showed an asymmetrical pattern of connectivity (right>left) in fronto-parietal regions associated with sustained attention, supporting the right-lateralization of this function. Interestingly, in the fatigue state, significance decreases were observed in left, but not right fronto-parietal connectivity. Our results indicate that functional network organization can change over relatively short time scales with mental fatigue, and that decreased connectivity has a meaningful relationship with individual difference in behavior and performance.

Sleep Deprivation Impairs Object-Selective Attention: A View from the Ventral Visual Cortex

Background Most prior studies on selective attention in the setting of total sleep deprivation (SD) have focused on behavior or activation within fronto-parietal cognitive control areas. Here, we evaluated the effects of SD on the top-down biasing of activation of ventral visual cortex and on functional connectivity between cognitive control and other brain regions. Methodology/Principal Findings Twenty-three healthy young adult volunteers underwent fMRI after a normal night of sleep (RW) and after sleep deprivation in a counterbalanced manner while performing a selective attention task. During this task, pictures of houses or faces were randomly interleaved among scrambled images. Across different blocks, volunteers responded to house but not face pictures, face but not house pictures, or passively viewed pictures without responding. The appearance of task-relevant pictures was unpredictable in this paradigm. SD resulted in less accurate detection of target pictures without affecting the mean false alarm rate or response time. In addition to a reduction of fronto-parietal activation, attending to houses strongly modulated parahippocampal place area (PPA) activation during RW, but this attention-driven biasing of PPA activation was abolished following SD. Additionally, SD resulted in a significant decrement in functional connectivity between the PPA and two cognitive control areas, the left intraparietal sulcus and the left inferior frontal lobe. Conclusions/Significance SD impairs selective attention as evidenced by reduced selectivity in PPA activation. Further, reduction in fronto-parietal and ventral visual task-related activation suggests that it also affects sustained attention. Reductions in functional connectivity may be an important additional imaging parameter to consider in characterizing the effects of sleep deprivation on cognition.

Dopaminergic polymorphisms associated with time-on-task declines and fatigue in the Psychomotor Vigilance Test.

Prolonged demands on the attention system can cause a decay in performance over time known as the time-on-task effect. The inter-subject differences in the rate of this decline are large, and recent efforts have been made to understand the biological bases of these individual differences. In this study, we investigate the genetic correlates of the time-on-task effect, as well as its accompanying changes in subjective fatigue and mood. N = 332 subjects performed a 20-minute test of sustained attention (the Psychomotor Vigilance Test) and rated their subjective states before and after the test. We observed substantial time-on-task effects on average, and large inter-individual differences in the rate of these declines. The 10-repeat allele of the variable number of tandem repeats marker (VNTR) in the dopamine transporter gene and the Met allele of the catechol-o-methyl transferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism were associated with greater vulnerability to time-on-task. Separately, the exon III DRD4 48 bp VNTR of the dopamine receptor gene DRD4 was associated with subjective decreases in energy. No polymorphisms were associated with task-induced changes in mood. We posit that the dopamine transporter and COMT genes exert their effects by increasing dopaminergic tone, which may induce long-term changes in the prefrontal cortex, an important mediator of sustained attention. Thus, these alleles may affect performance particularly when sustained dopamine release is necessary.

EEG alpha activity is associated with individual differences in post-break improvement

Continuous EEG activity has been used increasingly as a marker of mental and cognitive states, with previous work linking particular neural patterns to conditions of arousal or fatigue. This approach is more commonly used to assess task-related, as opposed to resting-state activity. In this study, we recorded the EEG of 31 healthy individuals as they performed two sessions of a 65-minute auditory oddball task, one with, and one without a 5-minute break opportunity. Over the course of the task, reaction times, as well as EEG power in theta and lower alpha bands increased in both conditions, but did not differ significantly between conditions. Over the period of the break, delta and theta EEG activity decreased significantly in comparison with activity in the equivalent period in the no-break condition. Individual differences in response to the break were observed, with approximately half the subjects showing an improvement, and half showing a decline. These individual differences were correlated both with decreases in theta activity, as well as resting upper alpha power during the period of the break. Our results suggest that tonic EEG activity during resting periods is meaningfully related to behavioral change between individuals based on physiological or psychological factors that remain to be explored.

Moral judgment modulation by disgust is bi-directionally moderated by individual sensitivity

Modern theories of moral judgment predict that both conscious reasoning and unconscious emotional influences affect the way people decide about right and wrong. In a series of experiments, we tested the effect of subliminal and conscious priming of disgust facial expressions on moral dilemmas. “Trolley-car”-type scenarios were used, with subjects rating how acceptable they found the utilitarian course of action to be. On average, subliminal priming of disgust facial expressions resulted in higher rates of utilitarian judgments compared to neutral facial expressions. Further, in replication, we found that individual change in moral acceptability ratings due to disgust priming was modulated by individual sensitivity to disgust, revealing a bi-directional function. Our second replication extended this result to show that the function held for both subliminally and consciously presented stimuli. Combined across these experiments, we show a reliable bi-directional function, with presentation of disgust expression primes to individuals with higher disgust sensitivity resulting in more utilitarian judgments (i.e., number-based) and presentations to individuals with lower sensitivity resulting in more deontological judgments (i.e., rules-based). Our results may reconcile previous conflicting reports of disgust modulation of moral judgment by modeling how individual sensitivity to disgust determines the direction and degree of this effect.

The Effects of Varying Break Length on Attention and Time on Task

Objective: We aimed to discover how varying the length of task breaks would affect the time-on-task effect in subsequent testing periods. Background: An important means of preventing errors and accidents caused by mental fatigue and time on task is to intersperse rest intervals within long work periods. Most studies of rest pauses to date have examined their effects in real-world tasks and settings, and their subtler effects on behavior, as measurable by laboratory paradigms, are not well understood. Method: We studied a group of 71 participants as they completed a 1-hr auditory oddball task with two rest opportunities. Rest intervals were 1, 5, or 10 min long. Results: Improvements in reaction time were significantly positively associated with length of the rest break. However, longer breaks were also associated with steeper decrements in performance in the subsequent task block. Across individuals, the amount of immediate improvement correlated with the extent of later decline. Conclusion: Our results support a resource/effort-allocation model of fatigue, whereby longer breaks bias participants toward greater effort expenditure on resumption of the task when cognitive resources may not have been fully replenished. Application: These findings may have implications for the refinement of work-rest schedules in industries where time-on-task degradation in performance is an important concern.

Rewards boost sustained attention through higher effort: A value-based decision making approach

Maintaining sustained attention over time is an effortful process limited by finite cognitive resources. Recent theories describe the role of motivation in the allocation of such resources as a decision process: the costs of effortful performance are weighed against its gains. We examined this hypothesis by combining methods from attention research and decision neuroscience. Participants first performed a sustained attention task at different levels of reward. They then performed a reward-discounting task, measuring the subjective costs of performance. Results demonstrated that higher rewards led to improved performance (Exp 1-3), and enhanced attentional effort (i.e. pupil diameter; Exp 2 & 3). Moreover, discounting curves constructed from the choice task indicated that subjects devalued rewards that came at the cost of staying vigilant for a longer duration (Exp 1 & 2). Motivation can thus boost sustained attention through increased effort, while sustained performance is regarded as a cost against which rewards are discounted.

Modulating rest-break length induces differential recruitment of automatic and controlled attentional processes upon task reengagement.

Rest breaks are commonly administered as a countermeasure to reduce on-the-job fatigue, both physical and mental. However, this practice makes the assumption that recovery from fatigue, as measured by the reversal of performance declines, is the sole effect of taking a break on behavior. Here, through administering rest breaks of differing lengths in between blocks of a mentally demanding symbol decoding task, we show that this assumption may not be strictly true. First, we replicate previous work by showing that taking a longer break leads to two correlated effects: greater immediate rebound in performance, and greater subsequent time-on-task decline. Using fMRI, we reveal that time-on-task in this paradigm is associated with increasing recruitment of fronto-parietal areas associated with top-down control, and decreasing deactivation in the default-mode network. Finally, by analyzing individual differences, we reveal a potential neural basis for our behavioral observation: greater recovery following long breaks is associated with greater activity in the putamen, an area associated with the automatic generation of motor responses, followed by greater activity in left middle frontal gyrus by the end of those task periods. Taken together, this suggests a shift in the implicit engagement of automatic and controlled attentional processing following longer breaks. This shift may be undesirable or detrimental in real-world situations where maintaining a stable level of attention over time is necessary.