Effects of total sleep deprivation on components of top‐down attentional control using a flexible attentional control task

Abstract

Summary Sleep deprivation consistently decreases vigilant attention, which can lead to difficulty in performing a variety of cognitive tasks. However, sleep‐deprived individuals may be able to compensate for degraded vigilant attention by means of top‐down attentional control. We employed a novel task to measure the degree to which individuals overcome impairments in vigilant attention by using top‐down attentional control, the Flexible Attentional Control Task (FACT). The FACT is a two‐choice task that has trials with valid, invalid, and neutral cues, along with an unexpected switch in the probability of cue validity about halfway in the task. The task provides indices that isolate performance components reflecting vigilant attention and top‐down attentional control. Twelve healthy young adults completed an in‐laboratory study. After a baseline day, the subjects underwent 39 hours of total sleep deprivation (TSD), followed by a recovery day. The FACT was administered at 03:00, 11:00, and 19:00 during sleep deprivation (TSD condition) and at 11:00 and 19:00 after baseline sleep and at 11:00 after recovery sleep (rested condition). When rested, the subjects demonstrated both facilitation and interference effects on cued trials. While sleep deprived, the subjects showed vigilant attention deficits on neutral cue trials, and an impaired ability to reduce these deficits by using predictive contextual cues. Our results indicate that the FACT can dissociate vigilant attention from top‐down attentional control. Furthermore, they show that during sleep deprivation, contextual cues help individuals to compensate partially for impairments in vigilant attention, but the effectiveness of top‐down attentional control is diminished.

Cognitive control, bedtime patterns, and testing time in female adolescent students: behavioral and neuro-electrophysiological correlates

“…We agree with this position, however we offer an addition to this approach which also takes into account the top-down influence of cortical neural networks, which likely also contributes to the overall picture of sleep related behavior ( 101 ). Previous research has shown that naturally, sleep deprivation or debt can lead to cognitive decline via top-down attention control deficits ( 102 ), while it has also been shown that sleep deprivation may not elicit deficiencies in bottom-up cognitive control ( 101 ). An apt metaphor is describing the contributions of both bottom-up and top-down influence over cognitive function as a balancing act .…”

Reduced Resting-State EEG Power Spectra and Functional Connectivity after 24 and 36 Hours of Sleep Deprivation

“…Although the harmful effects of TSD on individual cognitive function have been confirmed in numerous studies, some have found that different durations of sleep deprivation may have different effects on individual cognitive function [ 32 ]. At the behavioral level, Stenson (2023) [ 33 ] subjected 12 adults to 36 h of TSD and found that attentional functioning tended to decline between 20 and 36 h of TSD. Skurvydas (2021) [ 32 ] showed no significant change in reaction time to complete the Go/No-Go task after 24 h of TSD in 19 healthy adult males, but a significant increase in reaction time to the Go/No-Go task after 48 h of TSD (48 h TSD).…”