School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Behav Brain Res. 2012 Jul 15;233(1):62-70. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2012.04.050. Epub 2012 May 4.
Sleep disturbance in neurological and psychiatric disorders is common and associated with diminished cognitive functioning. Whilst these deficits can be localised predominantly to frontal and parietal regions, there have been reported inconsistencies which may be due to differences in the difficulty and type of task. In the present study we examined the effects of sleep deprivation (SD) whilst parametrically varying working memory load using an n-back task. 20 right-handed males performed the n-back task after a night of normal sleep (RW: rested wakefulness) and after approximately 31 h of SD. Comparison of load responsive cerebral activation identified two clusters where the parametric response was altered after SD. In the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activity was reduced at the most difficult working memory load, whereas in the right inferior parietal lobe activity was increased at the simplest working memory load. The strength of activation in both of these regions during RW predicted the response of those same regions to SD. While the ability to predict signal change has previously been demonstrated using behavioural measures, to our knowledge this is the first study to show that the neuronal effects of SD can be predicted based upon activation during a normal rested condition.
神经和精神障碍中的睡眠障碍很常见，且与认知功能下降有关。尽管这些缺陷主要局限于额叶和顶叶区域，但也有报道存在不一致之处，这可能是由于任务难度和类型的差异所致。在本研究中，我们使用 n-back 任务在参数上改变工作记忆负荷的情况下，检查了睡眠剥夺 (SD) 的影响。20 名右利手男性在一夜正常睡眠后（RW：休息清醒）和大约 31 小时的 SD 后进行了 n-back 任务。对负荷响应大脑激活的比较确定了两个簇，在 SD 后，这些簇的参数响应发生了改变。在右腹外侧前额叶皮层中，在最困难的工作记忆负荷下，活动减少，而在右顶下叶中，在最简单的工作记忆负荷下，活动增加。RW 期间这些区域的激活强度预测了这些相同区域对 SD 的反应。虽然之前已经使用行为测量来证明预测信号变化的能力，但据我们所知，这是第一项表明可以根据正常休息状态下的激活来预测 SD 的神经元效应的研究。
