Commonality and Diversity of Impairments in Inhibitory Tasks After Total Sleep Deprivation: Evidence from Drift Diffusion Model

Study Objectives This study investigated the effects of total sleep deprivation on two key sub-components of inhibitory control—interference inhibition and response inhibition—and examined whether sleep deprivation affects these components through shared or distinct cognitive mechanisms. Methods Thirty-six healthy adults (mean age ± SD: 24.83 ± 2.16 years) completed the Flanker and Go/No-Go tasks, which respectively measure interference inhibition and response inhibition, under both normal sleep and total sleep deprivation conditions. Two variants of the Drift Diffusion Model were applied to decompose the behavioral performance of each task into latent cognitive processes. Results Total sleep deprivation impaired overall behavioral performance (slower reaction times and reduced accuracy) in both tasks. It also led to a marginally significant increase in false alarms in the Go/No-Go task, while interference effects in the Flanker task remained unchanged. Moreover, drift-diffusion modeling revealed parallel impairments in information processing after sleep deprivation, as reflected by the reduction in drift rates across both tasks and decreased peak amplitude of task-irrelevant activation in the Flanker task. Furthermore, the decision threshold and starting point in the Go/No-Go task decreased after sleep deprivation. Conclusions Both the Flanker and Go/No-Go tasks are undermined by sleep deprivation due to the generally degraded central information processing, while sleep loss differently impacts the sub-components of inhibitory control with only response inhibition being impaired. These findings demonstrate the practicability of computational modeling in uncovering latent cognitive deficits obscured by traditional behavioral metrics.