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New preprint in @biorxivpreprint on #sleep and #attention:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.23.166991v1
@acbur7, @TeiganeMackay, Jenny Windt, @NaoTsuchiya and I investigated the neural mechanisms underlying attentional lapses.
Thread below:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.23.166991v1
@acbur7, @TeiganeMackay, Jenny Windt, @NaoTsuchiya and I investigated the neural mechanisms underlying attentional lapses.
Thread below:
We were interested in accounting for the diversity of attentional lapses in terms of behaviour and subjective experience. Indeed, they are many ways of being inattentive! You can become sluggish/fail to respond to your environment or you can become more impulsive! 1/n
Subjective experience can be likewise varied. You can start thinking about something else (mind wandering) or the stream of your #consciousness can come to a halt (mind blanking). Do these different forms of lapses represent a unitary physiological phenomenon? 2/n
It is worth nothing that, despite their diversity, attentional lapses tend to occur in individuals that are under high sleep pressure. Can sleep, and sleep intrusions during waking, explain the occurrence of lapses and predict the type of lapses? 3/n
We cross-analysed behavioural, phenomenological & physiological data from subjects performing a task. We first replicate common findings: people mind-wander and mind-blank a lot! And this is usually associated with feeling sleepy (subj reports) and being sleepy (pupillometry) 4/n
Subjective experiences of mind wandering and mind blanking were associated with different behavioural pattern: wandering = more impulsive / blanking = more sluggish. It makes sense: mind wandering can be seen as a form of phenomenological impulsivity! 5/n
To understand why lapses occur, we extracted a marker of sleepiness: local sleep. When you get tired, some brain regions can already show sleep-like activity: they have had enough and start a little snooze on their own. More on local sleep here:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00949/full
6/n
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00949/full
6/n
We found that not only local sleep can predict the occurrence of lapses at the behavioural and subjective level, but the location of local sleep can predict the type of lapses.
7/n
7/n
More specifically, local sleep in frontal brain regions is associated with impulsivity (more false alarms, faster RT, more mind wandering) and local sleep in posterior brain regions with sluggishness (more misses, slower RT and more mind blanking)!
8/n
8/n
Similar results were obtained when modelling behaviour with a drift diffusion model:
frontal local sleep = less inhibitory control (less accumulation of evidence for nogo responses)
posterior local sleep = less sensorimotor integration (ess accumulation of evidence for go)
9/n
frontal local sleep = less inhibitory control (less accumulation of evidence for nogo responses)
posterior local sleep = less sensorimotor integration (ess accumulation of evidence for go)
9/n
This fronto-posterior contrast mirrors how local modulations of sleep depth can influence the occurrence of dreaming (work from F. Siclari and @giu_bernardi), hinting for a continuum across waking and sleep. See also the work of @TrikBek for the gray zone in between!
10/n
10/n
This replicates prev findings in sleep deprived animals ( @VVyazovskiy) & humans ( @giu_bernardi @SSarasso1 @HungBessy @LabNir and others): local sleep could represent the proximate neural mechanism of attentional lapses and participates in shaping the stream of consciousness!
11/n
11/n
This work has been a long time in the making. A big thanks to the co-authors and in particular to @TeiganeMackay and her dedication to collect the data as well as @acbur7 and his DDM expertise! I thank also @Mon_Bio_Imaging, @turnerinstitute and @HFSP for their support!
12/12
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