Effects of COMT genotype and tolcapone on lapses of sustained attention after sleep deprivation in healthy young men.

ABSTRACT: Tolcapone, a brain penetrant selective inhibitor of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) devoid of psychostimulant properties, improves cognition and cortical information processing in rested volunteers, depending on the genotype of the functional Val158Met polymorphism of COMT. The impact of this common genetic variant on behavioral and neurophysiological markers of increased sleep need after sleep loss is controversial. Here we investigated the potential usefulness of tolcapone to mitigate consequences of sleep deprivation on lapses of sustained attention, and tested the hypothesis that dopamine signaling in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) causally contributes to neurobehavioral and neurophysiological markers of sleep homeostasis in humans. We first quantified in 73 young male volunteers the

SUBMITTER: Valomon A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5983551 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature