A systematic review of sleep deprivation and neurobehavioral function in young adults.
Stephanie Griggs, Alison Harper, Ronald L Hickman
PMID 35034695WHAT IT FOUND
In young adults, losing sleep slowed reaction time and increased missed responses on vigilance tests, with greater impairment after more sleep loss.
One night of total deprivation was clear. Chronic partial loss may leave people feeling only slightly sleepy while performance declines.
Key findings
01Total sleep deprivation produced significant declines in psychomotor vigilance performance in young adults, including slower reaction times and more lapses.
02Larger doses of sleep deprivation produced greater psychomotor vigilance impairment, and chronic partial sleep deprivation caused deficits equivalent to up to 2 nights of total sleep deprivation.
03After 14 days of partial sleep deprivation, performance declined while participants reported only slight daytime sleepiness, so self-report may miss chronic impairment.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The trials studied healthy young adults without sleep disorders, chronic medical conditions, severe psychiatric illness, BMI greater than 35 kg/m2, or night shift work, so results may not apply to patients with those conditions. Only 6 trials used a parallel-group design, and baseline or outcome data were often missing, so the review could not pool results in a meta-analysis. Designs, sleep deprivation doses, and measurement methods varied, so reproducibility and generalizability could not be fully assessed. Daytime sleepiness was assessed in 10 trials and affect in 6 trials, limiting confidence in those secondary outcomes. Most trials used acute sleep deprivation, so chronic real-world sleep loss remains less clear. Some crossover trials had only a week between conditions, raising carryover concerns, and four studies were held outside a controlled laboratory.
Declared interests
The supplied text lists N.I.H. extramural and non-U.S. government research support, but no author conflicts-of-interest statement is provided.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume a young adult who reports only slight sleepiness is performing safely. After 14 days of partial sleep deprivation, performance declined while self-reported sleepiness did not mirror those decrements.