Insufficient sleep: Enhanced risk-seeking relates to low local sleep intensity.

Objectives: Chronic sleep restriction is highly prevalent in modern society and is, in its clinical form, insufficient sleep syndrome, one of the most prevalent diagnoses in clinical sleep laboratories, with substantial negative impact on health and community burden. It reflects every-day sleep loss better than acute sleep deprivation, but its effects and particularly the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown for a variety of critical cognitive domains, as, for example, risky decision making.

Methods: We assessed financial risk-taking behavior after 7 consecutive nights of sleep restriction and after 1 night of acute sleep deprivation compared to a regular sleep condition in a within-subject design.