Drummond S P, Brown G G, Gillin J C, Stricker J L, Wong E C, Buxton R B
Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, 92093-0603, USA.
Nature. 2000 Feb 10;403(6770):655-7. doi: 10.1038/35001068.
The effects of sleep deprivation on the neural substrates of cognition are poorly understood. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the effects of 35 hours of sleep deprivation on cerebral activation during verbal learning in normal young volunteers. On the basis of a previous hypothesis, we predicted that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) would be less responsive to cognitive demands following sleep deprivation. Contrary to our expectations, however, the PFC was more responsive after one night of sleep deprivation than after normal sleep. Increased subjective sleepiness in sleep-deprived subjects correlated significantly with activation of the PFC. The temporal lobe was activated after normal sleep but not after sleep deprivation; in contrast, the parietal lobes were not activated after normal sleep but were activated after sleep deprivation. Although sleep deprivation significantly impaired free recall compared with the rested state, better free recall in sleep-deprived subjects was associated with greater parietal lobe activation. These findings show that there are dynamic, compensatory changes in cerebral activation during verbal learning after sleep deprivation and implicate the PFC and parietal lobes in this compensation.
睡眠剥夺对认知神经基质的影响目前还知之甚少。在此，我们利用功能磁共振成像技术，来测量35小时睡眠剥夺对正常年轻志愿者言语学习过程中大脑激活的影响。基于之前的一个假设，我们预测，睡眠剥夺后前额叶皮层（PFC）对认知需求的反应会减弱。然而，与我们的预期相反，一夜睡眠剥夺后PFC的反应比正常睡眠后更强烈。睡眠剥夺受试者主观困倦感的增加与PFC的激活显著相关。颞叶在正常睡眠后被激活，但在睡眠剥夺后未被激活；相反，顶叶在正常睡眠后未被激活，但在睡眠剥夺后被激活。尽管与休息状态相比，睡眠剥夺显著损害了自由回忆能力，但睡眠剥夺受试者更好的自由回忆能力与更大程度的顶叶激活有关。这些发现表明，睡眠剥夺后言语学习过程中大脑激活存在动态的、补偿性的变化，并且在这种补偿过程中涉及到PFC和顶叶。
