Flexibility of Brain Networks May Curtail Cognitive Consequences of Poor Sleep.

ABSTRACT: Previous research has shown that laboratory-controlled sleep deprivation leads to cognitive impairments, including low vigilance and deficits in working memory. However, the robustness of sleep effects on behavior and brain dynamics in naturalistic settings remains underexplored. In this study, we investigated the impact of naturalistic, unfettered variations in sleep on behavioral performance and brain network dynamics in 39 healthy adults. Using a dynamic networks approach combined with ordinal regression, we show a significant increase in flexibility, a measure of rapid reconfigurations within the brain modules, with decreasing sleep time, particularly in the fronto-parietal control network, during a psychomotor vigilance (PVT) and visual working memory (VWM) task. This change in networ

SUBMITTER: Zhou X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12460710 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature