New Zealand Brain Research Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand; Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, Christchurch Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Neuroimage. 2013 Aug 15;77:105-13. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.03.054. Epub 2013 Apr 1.
Sleep loss leads to both time-on-task slowing of responsiveness and increased frequency of transient response errors. The consequences of such errors during real-world visuomotor tasks, such as driving, are serious and life threatening. To investigate the neuronal underpinning of time-on-task and transient errors during a visuomotor tracking task following sleep restriction, we performed fMRI on 20 healthy individuals when well-rested and when sleep-restricted while they performed a 2-D pursuit-tracking task. Sleep restriction to 4-h time-in-bed was associated with significant time-on-task decline in tracking performance and an increased number of transient tracking errors. Sleep restriction was associated with time-on-task decreases in BOLD activity in task-related areas, including the lateral occipital cortex, intraparietal cortex, and primary motor cortex. In contrast, thalamic, anterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortex areas showed overall increases irrespective of time-on-task after sleep-restriction. Furthermore, transient errors after sleep-restriction were associated with distinct transient BOLD activations in areas not involved in tracking task per se, in the right superior parietal cortex, bilateral temporal cortex, and thalamus. These results highlight the distinct cerebral underpinnings of sustained and transient modulations in alertness during increased homeostatic drive to sleep. Ability to detect neuronal changes associated with both sustained and transient changes in performance in a single task allowed us to disentangle neuronal mechanisms underlying two important aspects of sustained task performance following sleep loss.
睡眠不足会导致任务时间延长时反应迟钝和瞬态反应错误频率增加。在现实世界的视动任务（如驾驶）中，此类错误的后果非常严重，甚至可能危及生命。为了研究睡眠限制后进行视动跟踪任务时与任务时间和瞬态错误相关的神经基础，我们在 20 名健康个体睡眠充足和睡眠限制时进行了 fMRI 扫描，让他们进行二维追踪任务。睡眠时间限制在 4 小时，与追踪表现的任务时间延长显著下降和瞬态跟踪错误数量增加有关。睡眠限制与任务相关区域的 BOLD 活动的任务时间延长减少有关，包括外侧枕叶皮质、顶内回和初级运动皮质。相比之下，丘脑、前扣带和内侧前额皮质区域在睡眠限制后无论任务时间如何，总体上都增加了。此外，睡眠限制后的瞬态错误与右顶上小叶、双侧颞叶和丘脑等本身不涉及跟踪任务的区域的独特瞬态 BOLD 激活有关。这些结果突出了在增加睡眠内稳态驱动时警觉性的持续和瞬态调节的不同大脑基础。能够检测到与单一任务中的性能持续和瞬态变化相关的神经元变化，使我们能够区分睡眠不足后持续任务表现的两个重要方面的神经元机制。
