ABSTRACT
The hypothesis-testing system relies on working memory and executive attentional processesand appears to depend on a neural circuit involving dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, the head of the caudate nucleus, and medial temporal lobe structures. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment examining the effects of Sleep deprivation (SD) on neural functioning, participants engaged in a number of decision-making tasks. Metacognitive ability also appears to predict how well an individual will cope with SD as the individuals identified as more vulnerable to SD declined in metacognitive capacity from Day 1 to Day 2 while the individuals less vulnerable to SD did not. In the visual spatial attention experiment, brain bioelectric responses were predictive of an individual's decrements of behavioral performance, as evidenced by increased overall response times and errors, after SD. An additional area examines whether individual differences in brain white matter development are related to SD vulnerability.
