ArticleNature medicine2017
Selective neuronal lapses precede human cognitive lapses following sleep deprivation.
Article in Nature medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 96 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
96 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 203 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sleep disorders and attention: a systematic review.Arquivos de neuro-psiquiatria · 2022Pooled it
- Slow-wave sleep during a brief nap is related to reduced cognitive deficits during sleep deprivation.Sleep · 2021Trial
- Effects of circadian misalignment on cognition in chronic shift workers.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Codeine plus acetaminophen improve sleep quality, daily activity level, and food intake in the early postoperative period after photorefractive keratectomy: a secondary analysis.Arquivos brasileiros de oftalmologiaTrial
- Lapses of attention.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Human tau pathology is associated with lonely, nontraveling slow waves linked to memory impairment.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Protecting episodic memory after sleep loss: Similar benefits of exercise and naps via distinct neural contributions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Induction of cortical on/off periods in awake mice fulfills sleep functions.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- DTI-ALPS and subcortical structural-functional coupling mediate the impact of sleep quality on working memory in insomnia disorder.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Sleep-like slow waves during resting-state: A promising EEG biomarker of amyloid and neurodegeneration in preclinical Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Parallel processing chains span cytoarchitectures to organize association cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A hippocampal 'sharp-wave sleep' state that is dissociable from cortical sleep.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dexmedetomidine produces more sleep-like brain activity compared with propofol in human participants.British journal of anaesthesia · 2026Article
- Sleep loss induces cholesterol-associated myelin dysfunction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Brain-wide properties of slow waves across vigilance states.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- A bistable stochastic model quantifies performance degradation during sleep deprivation.Sleep · 2025Article
- Attentional failures after sleep deprivation are locked to joint neurovascular, pupil and cerebrospinal fluid flow dynamics.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Induction of cortical ON/OFF periods in awake mice fulfills sleep functions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Resveratrol Improves Cognitive Function in Sleep-Deprived Mice by Inhibiting p38 MAPK Signaling Pathway.Food science & nutrition · 2025Article
36 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Sleep deprivation is a major source of morbidity with widespread health effects, including increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart attack, and stroke. Moreover, sleep deprivation brings about vehicle accidents and medical errors and is therefore an urgent topic of investigation. During sleep deprivation, homeostatic and circadian processes interact to build up sleep pressure, which results in slow behavioral performance (cognitive lapses) typically attributed to attentional thalamic and frontoparietal circuits, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Recently, through study of electroencephalograms (EEGs) in humans and local field potentials (LFPs) in nonhuman primates and rodents it was found that, during sleep deprivation, regional 'sleep-like' slow and theta (slow/theta) waves co-occur with impaired behavioral performance during wakefulness. Here we used intracranial electrodes to record single-neuron activities and LFPs in human neurosurgical patients performing a face/nonface categorization psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) over multiple experimental sessions, including a session after full-night sleep deprivation. We find that, just before cognitive lapses, the selective spiking responses of individual neurons in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) are attenuated, delayed, and lengthened. These 'neuronal lapses' are evident on a trial-by-trial basis when comparing the slowest behavioral PVT reaction times to the fastest. Furthermore, during cognitive lapses, LFPs exhibit a relative local increase in slow/theta activity that is correlated with degraded single-neuron responses and with baseline theta activity. Our results show that cognitive lapses involve local state-dependent changes in neuronal activity already present in the MTL.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.