@article{ref1,
title="Age-related changes in the time course of vigilant attention during 40 hours without sleep in men",
journal="Sleep",
year="2006",
author="Landolt, Hans-Peter and Khatami, Ramin and Rétey, Julia V. and Adam, Martin",
volume="29",
number="1",
pages="55-57",
abstract="STUDY OBJECTIVES: To examine whether vigilant attention and sleepiness develop differently during prolonged wakefulness in young and older men. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance and subjective sleepiness were determined in 14 sessions at 3 hour intervals in healthy young (n = 12, mean age: 25.2 years, range: 21-31 years) and older (n = 11, mean age: 66.4 years, range: 61-70 years) men who were kept awake for 40 hours under continuous supervision in a sleep laboratory and on the morning after the recovery night. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: PVT speed, response lapses and performance variability, and subjective sleepiness were analyzed. Sleep deprivation led to reversal of an age-related difference in PVT speed at the circadian trough of performance on the morning of the second day of prolonged wakefulness (Session x Age interaction: P &lt; .0006). Beginning after 22 hours of wakefulness, the young men also produced more lapses (P &lt; .004), showed higher performance instability (P &lt; .0001), and felt sleepier (P &lt; .03) than older men, especially during the morning after the night without sleep. CONCLUSIONS: Vigilant attention is more impaired after 1 night without sleep in young men than in older men, which has important implications for the prevention of accidents associated with the loss of sleep.   <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0161-8105",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}