STUDY OBJECTIVES Total sleep deprivation (TSD) is often associated with worse performance on tasks of attention and working memory, but some studies show no performance changes. One possibility is that greater compensatory cognitive effort is put forth to achieve similar results after TSD. We aimed to better understand the relationship between TSD, cognitive engagement, and performance outcomes following TSD. METHODS 20 healthy adults completed cognitive testing following a night of normal sleep and again after ~55 hours of TSD. Participants detected target letters in low (3-item) and high (10-item) load visual letter displays on the span of apprehension task with concurrent pupillometry, a measure of cognitive effort. RESULTS We found significantly poorer detection accuracy and marginally longer response times following TSD across both arrays. In both arrays, significantly greater preparatory pupillary responses were found just prior to array onset. There was also a significant session by array interaction for pupillary responses, such that significantly greater dilation was found for the 3-letter array after TSD, while a nonsignificant decline in dilation was found following the 10-letter array after TSD. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest a complex relationship between attentional control and cognitive resource allocation following TSD. Sleep deprived individuals may allocate more compensatory cognitive effort to easier tasks but choose to disengage from more challenging cognitive tasks that have little perceived reward or probability of success to preserve diminishing cognitive resources. More work is needed to better delineate the underlying neurological systems involved in these processing load-dependent attentional control mechanisms after TSD.

中文翻译：

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视觉信息处理任务中的睡眠剥夺和补偿性认知努力

研究目标 完全睡眠剥夺 (TSD) 通常与注意力和工作记忆任务的表现较差有关，但一些研究表明没有表现变化。一种可能性是，在 TSD 之后，为了获得类似的结果，需要付出更大的补偿性认知努力。我们旨在更好地了解 TSD、认知参与和 TSD 后的绩效结果之间的关系。方法 20 名健康成年人在正常睡眠后完成认知测试，并在约 55 小时 TSD 后再次完成认知测试。参与者检测到目标字母在低（3 项）和高（10 项）负载视觉字母显示中使用并发瞳孔测量法（一种衡量认知努力的方法）。结果我们发现两个阵列的 TSD 后检测准确度显着降低，响应时间略长。在两个阵列中，就在阵列开始之前发现明显更大的预备瞳孔反应。对于瞳孔反应，阵列相互作用也有一个重要的会话，因此在 TSD 后发现 3 个字母阵列的扩张明显更大，而在 TSD 后发现 10 个字母阵列后扩张没有显着下降。结论 这些结果表明 TSD 后注意力控制和认知资源分配之间存在复杂的关系。睡眠不足的人可能会将更多的补偿性认知努力分配给更容易的任务，但会选择脱离更具挑战性的认知任务，这些任务几乎没有感知奖励或成功的可能性，以保留不断减少的认知资源。