Scale-free fluctuations in behavioral performance: delineating changes in spontaneous behavior of humans with induced sleep deficiency.

ABSTRACT: The timing and dynamics of many diverse behaviors of mammals, e.g., patterns of animal foraging or human communication in social networks exhibit complex self-similar properties reproducible over multiple time scales. In this paper, we analyze spontaneous locomotor activity of healthy individuals recorded in two different conditions: during a week of regular sleep and a week of chronic partial sleep deprivation. After separating activity from rest with a pre-defined activity threshold, we have detected distinct statistical features of duration times of these two states. The cumulative distributions of activity periods follow a stretched exponential shape, and remain similar for both control and sleep deprived individuals. In contrast, rest periods, which follow power-law statistics over tw

SUBMITTER: Ochab JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4164638 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature