Fidelity of remote, video-monitored experimental total sleep deprivation

We investigated the fidelity of conducting total sleep deprivation procedures outside of a controlled laboratory environment and the effects on sleepiness, stress/arousal, and learning outcomes.

Young adult participants wore sleep trackers for five days (n = 77; Mage = 19.78, 56.3% female, 55.6% white). After a baseline night, they were randomly assigned to control sleep versus total sleep deprivation conditions in their home setting. Participants in the total sleep deprivation condition were continuously monitored via web cameras and provided hourly reports on subjective sleepiness, lux exposure, and activities for one night. The next morning, participants completed stress/arousal assessments as well as a virtual lecture and immediate test on science concept learning. Following a 48-hour interval that included recovery sleep, participants repeated the subjective sleepiness, stress/arousal, and science concept test assessments.

There were low rates of withdrawal (4%) or dismissal (6%) due to non-adherence. Participants completed all hourly reports and sleep tracker data indicated high adherence to the assigned sleep condition (control sleep: M = 7.54 hours; sleep deprivation: M = 0.04 hours). Sleepiness significantly and progressively worsened following total sleep deprivation, and returned to baseline levels following recovery sleep. Sleep deprivation dampened perceived physiological arousal and impaired science concept learning; these outcomes occurred in the absence of significant changes to reported stress. Following recovery sleep, science concept test performance was similar across conditions.

In healthy young adults, total sleep deprivation procedures can be implemented with high-fidelity in home settings, conferring opportunities for greater ecological validity, larger sample sizes, and potentially more broadly generalizable outcomes. Statement of Significance Total sleep deprivation experiments have required continuous monitoring in a laboratory environment, which is expensive, burdensome, and low in ecological validity. The current work utilized web cameras, digital software, and mobile sleep tracking to demonstrate that sleep deprivation experiments can be conducted in participants' home settings with high fidelity, adherence, and retention. Sleep deprivation caused worsening of sleepiness and educational learning, but recovery sleep returned these outcomes to baseline values. Though at-home sleep deprivation will not be appropriate for all research questions and study populations, this approach offers opportunities for efficient data collection of psychosocial, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes, larger sample sizes, and greater ecological validity. Furthermore, the remotely-monitored sleep deprivation approach may encourage new international collaborations for research groups across chrono-inverted time zones; this approach would allow daytime staff to monitor participants in their collaborator's (night) time zone, thereby eliminating the need to work overnight shifts and broadening opportunities to investigate cross-cultural differences.