Effects of modafinil on attentional processes during 60 hours of sleep deprivation

✍ Scribed by Philippe Stivalet; Dominique Esquivié; Pierre-Alain Barraud; Daniel Leifflen; Christian Raphel

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 141 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1077(1998100)13:7<501::aid-hup26>3.0.co;2-z

✦ Synopsis

The present study investigates the eects of moda®nil (300 mg/24 h) versus a placebo on the performance of a visual search task during 60 h of sleep deprivation. Moda®nil was administrated in doses of 100 mg three times per day during sleep deprivation. Six healthy volunteers participated in a double-blind experiment including two experimental sessions of 7 days each. The experiment used the visual search paradigm for an O' target among Q' distractors and the reverse. The speed and accuracy in detecting the target were measured by RTs slopes (i.e. search rates) and the number of errors (i.e. error rates), respectively. Many authors attribute rapid search rates obtained for Q' targets (low RTs slopes) to parallel/automatic processes and slow search rates obtained for O' targets (high RTs slope) to serial/attentional processes. The results revealed an asymmetrical search pattern for the detection of Q' versus O' targets across the sleep deprivation period (i.e. parallel versus serial search, respectively). Rapid search rates for Q' targets remained unchanged between placebo and moda®nil conditions during sleep deprivation. However, slow search rates for O' targets increased linearly in placebo condition, but remained at the same level as the control-test in moda®nil condition. Error rates and search rates also increased. For O' and Q' targets, the number of errors increased in the placebo condition, but remained stable in the moda®nil condition. In summary, we can conclude that the administration of moda®nil (300 mg/24 h) during sleep deprivation prevents the slowing of serial processes (attentional shifts) and the increasing of errors.