A single night of sleep restriction impairs decision-making reaction time but not heart rate variability.

BELLONE, GIANNINA; PLANO, SANTIAGO; TORTELLO, CAMILA; GALLARDO, JOSE

Punta del Este

Congreso; XVII Congreso Internacional de Medicina del Sueño; 2018

FLASS. Federación Latinoamericana de Sociedades de Sueño.

A single night of sleep restriction impairs decision-making reaction time but not heart rate variabilityBellone, Giannina (1,2); Plano, Santiago A. (1,2); Tortello, Camila (1,2); Gallardo, José (3); Llamedo, Mariano (3); Simonelli, Guido (4); Golombek, Diego A. (2); Vigo, Daniel E. (1,5).1. Institute for Biomedical Research, Catholic Univiersity of Argentina (UCA) - National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).2. Chronobiology Lab, National University of Quilmes (UNQ) and National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).3. Investigation and Development Bioengineering Group (GIBIO), National Technological University of Argentina (FRBA - UTN).4. Behavioral Biology Branch, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.5. Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven.Introduction: Total sleep deprivation impairs attention and working memory, but it also affects other functions, such as long-term memory and decision-making. Few studies have addressed whether a single night sleep restriction period affects cognitive and autonomic function. Objective: To compare alertness, decision-making and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) between one-night sleep restricted and non-restricted subjects and tocorrelate alertness, decision-making and HRV outcomes with fatigue symptoms.Methods: A total of 25 healthy volunteers participated in the study. Two experimental groups (restricted, n=10 and non-restricted, n=15) were studied. Sleep duration was confirmed with actigraphy. Alertness was assessed through a Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT). We administered a computerized Decision Making Test (Monterde-i-Bort?s TID), that quantified number of attempts (NA), number of successes (NS), success rate (SR), risk assumption (RA) and response time (RT). Fatigue was assessed through a Fatigue symptom survey. The autonomic nervous system activity was analyzed through heart rate variability (HRV). We used T-tests to assess between group differences and Pearson?s correlation tests to explore potential correlations betweenfatigue symptoms and cognitive and autonomic outcomes. Results: No significant differences in PVT reaction times were found between groups, but sleep restricted individuals had slower decision making reaction times (1.18±0.13s) than non-restricted ones (0.71±0.03s) (p<0.01). Fatigue symptoms were correlated with RT (r=0.815,p<0.001), NA (r=0.424, p<0.05) and NS (r=0.423, p<0.05). No significant differences were found in HRV between groups, though a suggestive trend (p<0.10) was found forHRV index SD1/SD2 which was lower in sleep restricted subjects. Fatigue symptoms were not correlated with HRV indexes. Conclusions: Decision making RT wasimpaired by a single night restriction period and fatigue. In addition, fatigue may have determined an increase in NA, followed by an increase in NS, but not, as expected, in SR. Heart Rate Variability measures were not sensitive enough to detect a single night sleep deprivation. Overall, an objective assessment of sleep deprivation and fatigue symptoms may be provided by different dimensions of the Decision Making test.