Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation is associated with considerable social, financial, and health-related costs, in large measure because it produces impaired cognitive performance due to increasing sleep propensity and instability of waking neurobehavioral functions. Cognitive functions particularly affected by sleep loss include psychomotor and cognitive speed, vigilant and executive attention, working memory, and higher cognitive abilities. Chronic sleep-restriction experiments--which model the kind of sleep loss experienced by many individuals with sleep fragmentation and premature sleep curtailment due to disorders and lifestyle--demonstrate that cognitive deficits accumulate to severe levels over time without full…

• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• NI
  National Institutes of Health