Impact of sleep deprivation on attentional networks: disentangling orienting components.

While it is well accepted that sleep deprivation (SD) negatively affects overall vigilance and performance, research on the extent to which SD affects discrete components of attention has produced inconsistent results. The present study aims at exploring the effects of SD on attentional components and their interactions using the revised attentional network test (ANT-R) which allows to examine the three attentional networks: alerting, orienting and executive control. Additionally, it allows the evaluation of subcomponents of orienting. The ANT-R was administered following two sleep conditions: Baseline (BL) - a regular night of uninterrupted sleep, and SD - 24 h of wakefulness. Our data show that SD selectively affects the three attentional networks. We have found a significant slowing down of executive control and a slight detriment of alerting. As far as orienting is concerned, the disengagement component was affected, while validity effect remained unaffected by SD. Our findings have relevant implications for intervention research, highlighting the importance of targeting specifically disengagement and executive control processes.