Influence Of Sleep Deprivation on Cognitive Function and Neural Connectivity in Healthy Adults

Abstract

The present day world has especially witnessed many of its inhabitants spend sleepless nights and this has raised a lot of eyebrows on the effects it has on the brain and thinking. Furthermore, sleep is known to support memory, attention, executive control, neural connections, and synapses. However, even with the common knowledge of sleep as a factor in brain activity, there are some issues regarding the changes that are instigated by sleep loss which requires further elucidation. The following questions will be answered in this study to address the gaps of knowledge that have been identified in this research about the effects of sleep loss on cognition and connectivity in healthy adults. In this study, the research design used was the randomized controlled trial whereby the subjects of 18-45 years were randomly assigned into a sleep deprivation group whereby the participants were kept awake throughout the night or the sleep control group. Cognitive function assessment was done with the test of memory, attention, and reaction time; for neural connectivity, we used fMRI and EEG. The experiments showed that after a night of no sleep, the ability to remember things dropped by 30%, and the pace at which a person reacted was slowed down by 25%. Neuroimaging analysis data revealed that connectivity of the prefrontal cortex was reduced by 60% and hippocampal connectivity was reduced by 65%. All these outcomes are the result of the impact of sleep loss on cognition and neural activity and the need to avoid such a decrease in sleep duration and encourage people to have healthy sleep