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Abstract
Sleep deprivation severely compromises the ability of human beings to respond to stimuli
in a timely fashion. These deficits have been attributed in large part to failures
of vigilant attention, which many theorists believe forms the bedrock of the other
more complex components of cognition. One of the leading paradigms used as an assay
of vigilant attention is the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), a high signal-load
reaction-time test that is extremely sensitive to sleep deprivation. Over the last
twenty years, four dominant findings have emerged from the use of this paradigm. First,
sleep deprivation results in an overall slowing of responses. Second, sleep deprivation
increases the propensity of individuals to lapse for lengthy periods (>500 ms), as
well as make errors of commission. Third, sleep deprivation enhances the time-on-task
effect within each test bout. Finally, PVT results during extended periods of wakefulness
reveal the presence of interacting circadian and homeostatic sleep drives. A theme
that links these findings is the interplay of "top-down" and "bottom-up" attention
in producing the unstable and unpredictable patterns of behavior that are the hallmark
of the sleep-deprived state.