Abstract
Sleep deprivation (SD) has been reported to severely affect executive function, and interindividual differences in these effects may contribute to the SD-associated cognition impairment. However, it is unclear how individual differences in chronotypes (morning-type, MT; evening-type, ET) influence neurobehavioral functions after SD. To address this question, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate whether 24 h of SD differentially affect response inhibition, a core component of executive function, in MT and ET individuals. Accordingly, MT and ET participants were instructed to follow their preferred 7–9-h sleep schedule for 2 weeks at home both prior to and throughout the course of the study, and then performed a go/no-go task during fMRI scanning at 08:00 a.m. both at rested wakefulness (RW) and following SD. We also examined whether the neurobehavioral inhibition differences in the chronotypes in each session can be predicted by subjective ratings (sleepiness, mood, and task) or objective attention. Behaviorally, SD led to an increased response time of go trials (hit RT), more attentional lapses, higher subjective sleepiness, and worse mood indices, but it did not impair the accuracy of go trials (hit rate) and no-go trials (stop rate). Regardless of the presence of SD, ET individuals exhibited a lower stop rate, higher subjective ratings of sleepiness, exhausted mood, and task difficulty in comparison with MT individuals. On the neural level, SD resulted in decreased inhibition-related activation of the right lateral inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) in MT individuals and increased rIFG activation in ET individuals. Moreover, the rIFG activation in ET individuals after SD was positively correlated to the subjective ratings of sleepiness and effort put into the task, which was considered as a compensatory response to the adverse effects of SD. These findings suggest that individual differences in inhibition-related cerebral activation after SD are influenced by chronotypes. In addition, ET individuals may be vulnerable to response inhibition. Thus, it is essential to take into consideration the chronotype in SD research and sleep medicine.
Highlights
Sleep deprivation (SD) is commonplace in modern society, and there is increasing neuroimaging evidence suggesting that the prefrontal cortex may be susceptible to the impacts of sleep loss due to its extensive use during normal waking [1]
We investigated the interindividual differences in the neurobehavioral functions associated with response inhibition between MT and ET individuals after SD
Regardless of the presence of SD, ET individuals demonstrated a lower stop rate, as well as higher subjective ratings of sleepiness, exhausted mood, and task difficulty compared to MT individuals
Summary
Sleep deprivation (SD) is commonplace in modern society, and there is increasing neuroimaging evidence suggesting that the prefrontal cortex may be susceptible to the impacts of sleep loss due to its extensive use during normal waking [1]. SD should impair complex executive functions that rely on the prefrontal regions [2] Studies on this assumption have yielded inconsistent results, with some groups reporting impairments in executive function tasks during SD [3,4,5] and others failing to find such effects [6, 7]. The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate whether 24-h total SD differentially affects the neurobehavioral differences in response inhibition, a core component of executive function, between MT and ET individuals. To investigate this question, MT and ET participants underwent scanning while performing a go/no-go task in both rested wakefulness (RW) and SD conditions. We hypothesized that SD would differentially impact the neurobehavioral changes of chronotypes and that the subjective ratings and objective attention of participants in each session would predict to some extent the neurobehavioral responses to inhibition
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