Effects of Sleep Deprivation With 10 and 110 Minute Recovery Periods on the P300 in University Students

Auditory Evoked Potentials (AEPs) have been used as an objective measure to estimate hearing sensitivity and to study the integrity of the auditory neural pathways. Because the P300 is an endogenous AEP response, requiring participants to attend to an auditory stimulus to elicit a response, it has been used to assess the effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive processes such as attention and memory. There is evidence that the P300 response\u27s amplitude will decrease and that its latency will increase following 24 hours of sleep deprivation; confirming a slowing of cognitive processing following these adverse conditions. To date, there has been limited research about whether or not a brief recovery period will return the P300\u27s amplitude and latency to baseline values. The present study was designed to further study the effects of sleep deprivation and both 10 and 110 minute recovery periods on the P300 using a simple oddball paradigm (standard = 1000 Hz; target = 2000 Hz). AEPs were recorded for three conditions: baseline, after 23 to 26 hours of sleep deprivation, and following the recovery period. Participants consisted of 24 university students. Results revealed a significant increase in latency (p \u3c 0.05) and a significant decrease in amplitude (p \u3c 0.001 ) following sleep deprivation as well as a significant difference between the 10 minute and the 110 minute recovery groups (p \u3c 0.001). The results suggest sleep deprivation has an adverse effect on cognition and has provided preliminary research on the amount of rest needed to recover from these effects