Effect of homeostatic pressure on daytime vigilance performance: Evidence from behaviour and resting‐state EEG

Summary Vigilance is highly sensitive to the time‐of‐day effect and goes through the daytime trough during the period of the post‐noon dip. A midday nap could maintain individuals’ vigilance at an optimal level. Thus, homeostatic sleep pressure is one of the main reasons for the post‐noon dip in daytime vigilance. The current study focussed on the role of homeostatic sleep pressure in the diurnal variation of vigilance performance with normal circadian rhythms and the corresponding neural basis. With 34 healthy adults, we recorded the resting‐state electroencephalogram activities and the following vigilance performance measured by psychomotor vigilance test in the morning, the no‐nap mid afternoon, and the nap mid afternoon. The circadian process was controlled by measuring vigilance and resting‐state electroencephalogram activities at the same time point in the nap and no‐nap conditions. Homeostatic sleep pressure accumulated from morning to mid afternoon induced the declined vigilance performance and a global increase in resting‐state delta, theta, alpha, and beta1 bands power, and a local increase in beta2 band power in the central region. Furthermore, the more the spontaneous beta2 power increased, the less vigilance declined from morning to mid afternoon. The current findings suggest that homeostatic sleep pressure increased cortical excitability but decreased cortical communication efficiency from morning to mid afternoon. In addition, the activity of the high beta waves probably reflected the compensatory effort to counteract the negative impact of the low arousal state on the following vigilance task by performing more action preparation in the no‐nap afternoon.