Abstract
Sleep deprivation affects the performance of postural control and several other aspects related to attentional mechanisms that may alter sensory cue acquisition strategies. This study aimed to examine the possible effects of horizontal saccades and ocular fixation on a target in the performance of postural control in young adults with sleep deprivation. Twenty-six adults formed two groups, tested in two evaluations. In the first evaluation, participants slept normally on the night before. In the second evaluation, 13 participants were sleep deprived (SD) and 13 slept normally (control group [CG]) on the night before. In both evaluations, each participant stood upright as still as possible, in two experimental conditions: fixating the eye on a target and performing saccadic movement toward a target presented in two different locations (0.5 Hz). Each participant performed 3 trials in each condition, lasting 62 s each. Body oscillation was obtained in both anterior–posterior and medial–lateral directions. Results showed that SD participants swayed with a larger magnitude and higher velocity after sleep deprivation in the fixation condition. In the saccadic condition, body sway magnitude and velocity were reduced but were still larger/higher in the SD participants. Sleep deprivation deteriorates the performance of postural control. Saccadic eye movements improve postural control performance even in sleep-deprived participants but are still not sufficient to avoid postural control deterioration due to sleep deprivation.
Highlights
Sleep conditions have become a recent and relevant problem in modern societies because of the considerable decrease in hours that had been used for resting in the previous decades (Schoenborn and Adams, 2010)
Our hypothesis was that sleep deprivation would deteriorate postural control performance and would impair the usage of additional cues from eye-guided movements to improve postural control performance
While the average values indicated alert and relative alert for control group (CG) participants in both evaluations, for the sleep deprived (SD) participants alert and relative alert were indicated in the first evaluation but a state of sleepiness with a great deal of effort to keep awake after sleep restriction and prior to the second evaluation
Summary
Sleep conditions have become a recent and relevant problem in modern societies because of the considerable decrease in hours that had been used for resting in the previous decades (Schoenborn and Adams, 2010). Sleep deprivation or restriction affects performance in many of our daily activities. Several studies have shown deleterious effects on postural control performance (Liu et al, 2001; Nakano et al, 2001; Fabbri et al, 2006), with sleep-deprived young adults swaying with larger magnitude (Gribble and Hertel, 2004; Gomez et al, 2008; Patel et al, 2008; Ma et al, 2009; Robillard et al, 2011; Aguiar and Barela, 2014) and higher velocity (Liu et al, 2001; Gribble and Hertel, 2004; Robillard et al, 2011; Aguiar and Barela, 2014) during maintenance of upright stance. It has been suggested that sleep deprivation would affect the acquisition of sensory cues and its integration into motor action in maintaining and controlling postural orientation (Fabbri et al, 2006; Gomez et al, 2008; Bougard et al, 2011; Aguiar and Barela, 2014, 2015)
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