A Study of Balance Function during Sleep Deprivation

Abstract

It is known that the contingent negative variation (CNV) is not seen with sleep suppression, and the production mechanism cannot recover at once. In this study, we employed the experiment of 36 hours sleep suppression. Stabilograms, flicker values (FV), and Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) were measured every 90 minutes for 51 hours except for their 12 hours sleep. As a result of the time sequences in the FV and SSS, vigilance remarkably decreased 22.5 after the onset of this experiment, which was regarded as an evidence supporting CNV disappearance with the sleep suppression. Sway value with subjects' eyes closed was the greatest 22.5 hours after the onset of this experiment. The body sway during the CNV disappearance is interesting because we can study the biological control by the subconsciousness, where the body sway is expressed by stochastic differential equations (SDEs). The authors also employed numerical analysis of the SDEs that were obtained from the time series data of the body sway.