Fransson P A, Patel M, Magnusson M, Berg S, Almbladh P, Gomez S
Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck surgery, Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
J Vestib Res. 2008;18(4):209-22.
Sleep restrictions and sleep deprivation have become common in modern society, as many people report daily sleep below the recommended 8 hours per night. This study aimed to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on oculomotor performance by recording smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements after 24 and 36 hours of sleep deprivation. Another objective was to determine whether detected changes in oculomotor performance followed fluctuations according to a circadian rhythm and/or subjective Visuo-Analogue sleepiness Scale scores. Oculomotor responses were recorded from 18 subjects using electronystagmography, and comprised measurements of accuracy (i.e., the percentage of time the eye movement velocity was within the target velocity boundaries), velocity and latency. Continuous EEG recordings were used to validate that subjects had remained awake throughout the 36-hour period. Our findings showed that sleep deprivation deteriorated smooth pursuit gain, smooth pursuit accuracy and saccade velocity. Additionally, the ratio between saccade velocity and saccade amplitude was significantly decreased by sleep deprivation. However, as the length of sleep deprivation increased, only smooth pursuit gain deteriorated further, whereas there were signs of improvement in smooth pursuit accuracy measurements. The latter observation suggests that smooth pursuit accuracy might be affected by the circadian rhythm of alertness. Surprisingly, high subjective scores of sleepiness correlated in most cases with better saccade performance, especially after 36 hours of sleep deprivation, suggesting that awareness of sleepiness might make subjects perform better during saccade assessments. To conclude, oculomotor function clearly decreased after sleep deprivation, but the performance deteriorations were complex and not necessarily correlated with subjectively felt sleepiness.
睡眠限制和睡眠剥夺在现代社会已变得很常见，因为许多人报告每天的睡眠时间低于每晚推荐的8小时。本研究旨在通过记录睡眠剥夺24小时和36小时后的平稳跟踪和扫视眼动来检查睡眠剥夺对眼动功能的影响。另一个目标是确定检测到的眼动功能变化是否随昼夜节律和/或主观视觉模拟嗜睡量表评分而波动。使用眼震电图记录了18名受试者的眼动反应，包括对准确性（即眼动速度在目标速度范围内的时间百分比）、速度和潜伏期的测量。连续脑电图记录用于验证受试者在36小时内一直保持清醒。我们的研究结果表明，睡眠剥夺会使平稳跟踪增益、平稳跟踪准确性和扫视速度恶化。此外，睡眠剥夺会使扫视速度与扫视幅度之间的比率显著降低。然而，随着睡眠剥夺时间的增加，只有平稳跟踪增益进一步恶化，而平稳跟踪准确性测量有改善的迹象。后一观察结果表明，平稳跟踪准确性可能受警觉性昼夜节律的影响。令人惊讶的是，在大多数情况下，高主观嗜睡评分与更好的扫视表现相关，尤其是在睡眠剥夺36小时后，这表明对嗜睡的意识可能会使受试者在扫视评估中表现得更好。总之，睡眠剥夺后眼动功能明显下降，但性能恶化情况复杂，不一定与主观感觉到的嗜睡相关。
