Carro-Domínguez Manuel, Huwiler Stephanie, Stich Fabia M, Sala Rossella, Aziri Florent, Trippel Anna, Heimhofer Caroline, Huber Reto, Meissner Sarah Nadine, Wenderoth Nicole, Lustenberger Caroline
Neural Control of Movement Laboratory, Institute of Human Movement Sciences and Sport, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Centre of Competence Sleep & Health Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
J Sleep Res. 2025 Jun;34(3):e14371. doi: 10.1111/jsr.14371. Epub 2024 Oct 17.
Deep sleep oscillations are proposed to be central in restoring brain function and to affect different aspects of motor performance such as facilitating the consolidation of motor sequences resulting in faster and more accurate sequence tapping. Yet, whether deep sleep modulates performance fatigability during fatiguing tasks remains unexplored. We investigated overnight changes in tapping speed and resistance against performance fatigability via a finger tapping task. During fast tapping, fatigability manifests as a reduction in speed (or "motor slowing") which affects all tapping tasks, including motor sequences used to study motor memory formation. We further tested whether overnight changes in performance fatigability are influenced by enhancing deep sleep oscillations using auditory stimulation. We found an overnight increase in tapping speed alongside a reduction in performance fatigability and perceived workload. Auditory stimulation led to a global enhancement of slow waves and both slow and fast spindles during the stimulation window and a local increase in slow spindles in motor areas across the night. However, overnight performance improvements were not significantly modulated by auditory stimulation and changes in tapping speed or performance fatigability were not predicted by individual changes in deep sleep oscillations. Our findings demonstrate overnight changes in fatigability but revealed no evidence suggesting that this effect is causally linked to temporary augmentation of slow waves or sleep spindles. Our results are important for future studies using tapping tasks to test the relationship between sleep and motor memory consolidation, as overnight changes in objectively measured and subjectively perceived fatigue likely impact behavioural outcomes.
深度睡眠振荡被认为是恢复大脑功能的核心，并影响运动表现的不同方面，例如促进运动序列的巩固，从而实现更快、更准确的序列敲击。然而，深度睡眠是否会在疲劳任务中调节表现疲劳性仍未得到探索。我们通过一项手指敲击任务研究了敲击速度和抗表现疲劳性的夜间变化。在快速敲击过程中，疲劳性表现为速度降低（或“运动减慢”），这会影响所有敲击任务，包括用于研究运动记忆形成的运动序列。我们进一步测试了通过听觉刺激增强深度睡眠振荡是否会影响表现疲劳性的夜间变化。我们发现敲击速度在夜间有所提高，同时表现疲劳性和感知工作量有所降低。听觉刺激在刺激窗口期间导致慢波以及慢纺锤波和快纺锤波全面增强，并且在整个夜间运动区域的慢纺锤波局部增加。然而，夜间的表现改善并未受到听觉刺激的显著调节，敲击速度或表现疲劳性的变化也无法通过深度睡眠振荡的个体变化来预测。我们的研究结果证明了疲劳性的夜间变化，但没有证据表明这种效应与慢波或睡眠纺锤波的暂时增强存在因果关系。我们的结果对于未来使用敲击任务来测试睡眠与运动记忆巩固之间关系的研究很重要，因为客观测量和主观感知的疲劳的夜间变化可能会影响行为结果。
