Predicting Cognitive Resilience Against Sleep Loss

Resilience, the ability to cope effectively and adapt to a wide range of stressful environmental challenges, appears to be mediated extensively by the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Sleep deprivation has been shown to reduce metabolic activity throughout the brain, particularly the MPFC. The ability to resist the effects of sleep loss appears to be a stable, trait-like phenomenon that is consistent across situations, suggesting that it may reflect an enduring quality of the underlying neurobiological system. The present study aims to identify the neural basis of resilience and effectively discriminate resistant from vulnerable individuals during an overnight sleep deprivation session. Specifically, the primary aims of this research are 1) to further our understanding of the role of the MPFC in resilience and 2) to develop a statistical prediction algorithm based on multimodal neuroimaging that will reliably discriminate between individuals who are resilient versus vulnerable to the cognitive impairing effects of sleep loss.