Citation

Killgore WD, Kendall AP, Richards JM, McBride SA. Percept. Mot. Skills 2007; 105(1): 276-286.

Affiliation

Division of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Department of Behavioral Biology, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), 503 Robert Grant Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA. william.d.killgore@us.army.mil

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

17918576

Abstract

Sleep deprivation impairs a variety of cognitive abilities including vigilance, attention, and executive function. Although sleep loss has been shown to impair tasks requiring visual attention and spatial perception, it is not clear whether these deficits are exclusively a function of reduced attention and vigilance or if there are also alterations in visuospatial perception. Visuospatial perception and sustained vigilance performance were therefore examined in 54 healthy volunteers at rested baseline and again after one night of sleep deprivation using the Judgment of Line Orientation Test and a computerized test of psychomotor vigilance. Whereas psychomotor vigilance declined significantly from baseline to sleep-deprived testing, scores on the Judgment of Line Orientation did not change significantly. Results suggest that documented performance deficits associated with sleep loss are unlikely to be the result of dysfunction within systems of the brain responsible for simple visuospatial perception and processing of line angles.

Language: en