Effect of Self‐Enhanced EEG Alpha on Performance and Mood After Two Nights of Sleep Loss

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Abstract
Can the deleterious effects of acute sleep loss on performance and mood be ameliorated by self‐enhanced alpha activity? Fourteen Naval volunteers were divided equally into an experimental (alpha‐contingent auditory feedback) group and a yoked control (pseudo feedback) group. All subjects received feedback plus performance and mood tests during 3 baseline days and following 2 days and 2 nights without sleep. Feedback was given for 45 min in the morning and 45 mm in the afternoon, preceding performance and mood tests. The self‐enhanced alpha (experimental) subjects did produce more alpha than the yoked controls during all feedback sessions except for one pair that was discarded. Of eleven measures that were sensitive to deep loss, two performance scores and one mood score showed significantly less sleep‐loss decrement for the self‐enhanced alpha group (at the usual univariate. 05 level). Two recall scores and an anxiety score showed more impairment for the self‐enhanced alpha group following sleep loss. The differences were not significant, however, by (he conservative Dunn‐Bonferroni multivariate criterion, so our results are not conclusive.Alpha enhancement may help maintain performance that requires continuous attention, such us counting and auditory discrimination, but does not ameliorate the sleep‐loss effect for anxiety, memory, and addition.