Hengyi Rao1,2, Dan Luftig2,
Julian Lim2, John A. Detre3, Daivid F. Dinges2
1Center for Functional
Neuroimaging, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 2Unit for
Experimental Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United
States; 3Center for Functional Neuroimaging, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
Little is known about the effects of sleep deprivation on neural correlates of risk-taking. The present study used functional MRI and examined the effects of 24hr of total sleep deprivation (TSD) on risk-taking during a modified balloon analog risk task (BART) in 27 normal subjects. One night TSD did not alter the BART risk-taking behavior, nor the risk-induced brain activation patterns. However, TSD decreased insula activation during the loss events and impaired the negative correlation between risk-taking behavior and neural activation in insula and striatum, suggesting that sleep deprivation may alter neural responses during risk-taking before actual behavioral changes.