Electroencephalographic changes after one night of sleep deprivation

Total or partial sleep deprivation (SD) causes degrading effects on different cognitive and psychomotor functions that might be related to electrophysiological changes frequently observed. In the present study, we investigated the effects of one night of sleep deprivation on waking EEG. Experimental protocol consisted of recording electroencephalographic data from eleven healthy young subjects before (baseline) and after (time 2) one night of sleep deprivation. A natural log transformation was carried out and showed a significant increase in theta T6 (p=0.041), O2 (p=0.018) and OZ (p=0.028); and delta T6 (p=0.043) relative power; and a decrease in alpha Fp1 (p=0.040), F3 (p=0.013), Fp2 (p=0.033), T4 (p=0.050), T6 (p=0.018), O2 (p=0.011) and Oz (p=0.025) and beta (p=0.022) absolute power. These outcomes show that the EEG power spectra, after sleep deprivation, exhibit site-specific differences in particular frequency bands and corroborate for the premise of local aspects of brain adaptation after sleep deprivation, rather than global.