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Abstract Introduction Sleep loss can adversely affect brain mechanisms underlying attention and inhibitory control, potentially leading to increased impulsive behavior. We propose that youth with more severe attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)-like traits may be particularly vulnerable to sleep loss on impulsivity tasks. We examined this possibility using an fMRI Go/No-Go task in a within-subject at-home sleep restriction experiment in children with high or low ADHD-like traits. Methods Thirty adolescents (13M; 12.14±0.99yrs) were grouped by the Conners-3-Parent ADHD-Probability Index =/ 50%tile as high (ADHDy; n=13) or low (ADHDn; n=17). All children completed two counterbalanced conditions: 5-nights of sleep optimization (SO; 10h TIB set to habitual risetime) and 5-nights of sleep restriction (SR; 7.5h TIB; delaying bedtime and advancing risetime equally). At least 2 nights of stabilization preceded both conditions. Following both SO and SR, participants completed fMRI scanning consisting of two 7-minute runs of an event-related Go/No-Go task. We investigated activation associated with impulsive errors (commissionshits). Voxel-wise 2x2 linear mixed effects models (3dLME) examined condition SR vs. SO, group ADHDy vs. ADHDn, and interaction effects with significance set to p.005, k=30 voxels. Results Wrist actigraphy indicated that SR was successful in reducing sleep period time by 20% (SR= 7.32±0.48 vs. SO= 9.14±0.46h; t(29)=21.23, p.001; d=3.88) and total sleep time by 17% (SR= 6.72±0.55 vs. SO= 8.13±0.65h; t(29)=15.08, p.001; d=.2.75). At SO, commission errors (vs. hits) were associated with higher activation in the bilateral putamen, bilateral precentral gyri, left inferior frontal gyrus, and the bilateral insula. We identified a significant condition-x-group interaction in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (MNIx,y,z: [29, 35,47, k=65), whereby sleep restriction decreased error signaling for the ADHDn group, but not for the ADHDy group. Conclusion These initial findings indicate that ADHD traits may moderate the impact of sleep loss on impulsive error signaling during the Go/No-Go task. Those in the ADHDy group appear particularly sensitive to commission error processing in the prefrontal cortex. As data collection continues, our analyses will pivot to computational modeling of inter-individual variability in this effect. Support (if any) R01HD103655; P20GM139743
Moyles et al. (Sat,) studied this question.