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Abstract

Objective Even though wakefulness at night leads to profound performance deterioration and is regularly experienced by shift workers, its cerebral correlates remain virtually unexplored. Methods We assessed brain activity in young healthy adults during a vigilant attention task under high and low sleep pressure during night-time, coinciding with strongest circadian sleep drive. We examined sleep-loss–related attentional vulnerability by considering a PERIOD3 polymorphism presumably impacting on sleep homeostasis. Results Our results link higher sleep-loss–related attentional vulnerability to cortical and subcortical deactivation patterns during slow reaction times (i.e., suboptimal vigilant attention). Concomitantly, thalamic regions were progressively less recruited with time-on-task and functionally less connected to task-related and arousal-promoting brain regions in those volunteers showing higher attentional instability in their behavior. The data further suggest that the latter is linked to shifts into a task-inactive default-mode network in between task-relevant stimulus occurrence. Interpretation We provide a multifaceted view on cerebral correlates of sleep loss at night and propose that genetic predisposition entails differential cerebral coping mechanisms, potentially compromising adequate performance during night work.