Evaluation of drowsiness during prolonged sleep deprivation.
Prolonged sleep deprivation is a relatively frequent situation during military training or warfare. A 60-hour sleep deprivation experiment was carried out on eight healthy volunteers of the French Air Force to assess drowsiness. Parameters used to assess drowsiness were questionnaires on behavior, measurement of sleep latency (MSLT), continuous electroencephalogram recording, and number of response failures or control losses observed during repeated psychomotor tests. Results showed a gradual decrement in arousal in all subjects and for all tests. These results, consistent with the literature, confirm the emergence of drowsiness after the 24th hour of uninterrupted wakefulness. This phenomenon had an increasingly negative effect on performance due to "micro-sleep" episodes which substantially reduced psychomotor performance.
Lagarde
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Département sciences cognitives et ergonomie, centre d'études et de recherches de médecine aérospatiale, Brétigny-sur-Orge, France.
Batejat
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D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D006801:Humans; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000502:physiology*; D012894:Sleep Stages / Q000502:physiology*