Psychomotor vigilance task performance during and following chronic sleep restriction in rats.

Study Objectives: Chronic sleep restriction (CSR) impairs sustained attention in humans, as commonly assessed with the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT). To further investigate the mechanisms underlying performance deficits during CSR, we examined the effect of CSR on performance on a rat version of PVT (rPVT).

Design: Adult male rats were trained on a rPVT that required them to press a bar when they detected irregularly presented, brief light stimuli, and were then tested during CSR.