Electrophysiological recording and analysis during protracted continuous work experiments

A system is described that allows electrophysiological data to be collected and analysed from sleep loss studies involving continuous cognitive work. This system needed to satisfy two major requirements. First, the electrophysiological hardware had to be able to record extended periods of physiology (often lasting 80 h) from multiple electrode sites and yet be portable enough to allow subject mobility. Second, a comprehensive yet flexible procedure had to be developed to temporally map the physiology to critical experimental events (e.g., all the behavioural tasks, sleeping and napping periods). The resulting system uses the Oxford Medilog 9000 for data acquisition and playback as well as a custom software environment to digitize and analyse these data.