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

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• Vigilance

• daytime trough

• midday nap could maintain individuals’ vigilance at an optimal level

• 34 healthy adults

• electroencephalogram

• psychomotor vigilance test

• Homeostatic sleep pressure accumulated

• induced the declined vigilance performance

• homeostatic sleep pressure increased cortical excitability but decreased cortical communication efficiency from morning to mid afternoon.

• cognitive functions fluctuate across the day, known as the time-of-day effect

• Vigilance, also known as sustained attention,

• maintaining the required state of arousal to detect and quickly react to unpredictable stimuli in the environment over prolonged periods, which is highly sensitive to the time-of-day effect

• In general, vigilance levels gradually improve in the morning after dissipating sleep inertia

• mid afternoon, vigilance has a significant decline

• improves again

• traffic accidents frequently occur (Correa et al., 2014) and working people suffer poor performance and increased errors in the workplace (Askaripoor et al., 2019).

• homeostatic and circadian processes act in opposition to promote wakefulness

• In the morning, sleep pressure is low and the circadian drive for wakefulness gradually increases, contributing to the high vigilance state