Circadian Preference Modulates the Neural Substrate of Conflict Processing across the Day

PLoS One

Fabienne Collette¹  Philippe Peigneux²  Thanh Dang-Vu³  Gilles Vandewalle³  Christian Cajochen³  Yves Leclercq³  André Luxen³  Pierre Maquet³  Manuel Schabus³  Christian Degueldre³  Pierre Berthomier³  Christina Schmidt³  Christophe Phillips³  Eric Salmon³  Christian Berthomier³  Martin Desseilles³  Evelyne Balteau³  Virginie Sterpenich⁴  Steffen Gais⁵  Gilberte Tinguely⁵ 

[1]Centre for Chronobiology, Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

[2]Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Centre, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

[3]Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

[4]Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Research Unit (UR2NF), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

[5]PHYSIP SA, Paris, France

关键词: Sleep;    Cognition;    Homeostasis;    Functional magnetic resonance imaging;    Chronobiology;    Behavior;    Electroencephalography;    Vigilance (psychology);   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.pone.0029658

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Human morning and evening chronotypes differ in their preferred timing for sleep and wakefulness, as well as in optimal daytime periods to cope with cognitive challenges. Recent evidence suggests that these preferences are not a simple by-product of socio-professional timing constraints, but can be driven by inter-individual differences in the expression of circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake promoting signals. Chronotypes thus constitute a unique tool to access the interplay between those processes under normally entrained day-night conditions, and to investigate how they impinge onto higher cognitive control processes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the influence of chronotype and time-of-day on conflict processing-related cerebral activity throughout a normal waking day. Sixteen morning and 15 evening types were recorded at two individually adapted time points (1.5 versus 10.5 hours spent awake) while performing the Stroop paradigm. Results show that interference-related hemodynamic responses are maintained or even increased in evening types from the subjective morning to the subjective evening in a set of brain areas playing a pivotal role in successful inhibitory functioning, whereas they decreased in morning types under the same conditions. Furthermore, during the evening hours, activity in a posterior hypothalamic region putatively involved in sleep-wake regulation correlated in a chronotype-specific manner with slow wave activity at the beginning of the night, an index of accumulated homeostatic sleep pressure. These results shed light into the cerebral mechanisms underlying inter-individual differences of higher-order cognitive state maintenance under normally entrained day-night conditions.

【 授权许可】

CC BY