Sleep deprivation reduces the rate of rapid picture processing

Object recognition becomes impaired at faster presentation rates and here we show the neuroanatomical foci of where this might be exacerbated by sleep deprivation (SD). Twenty healthy human participants were asked to detect a target house in serially presented house pictures that appeared at 1-15 images/s. Temporal response profiles relating fMRI signal magnitude to presentation frequency were derived from task-responsive regions. Following SD, the inverted U-shaped response profile within parahippocampal place area was lower and peaked at a slower presentation rate than when participants slept normally. Contrastingly, SD did not shift the relatively monotonic early visual cortex responses. The intraparietal sulci but not the frontal eye fields or medial frontal region, showed similar shifts in temporal response profiles following SD, suggesting differential contribution of areas mediating attention control towards limiting rapid object processing. As nodes of the default mode network (DMN) continued to show monotonically increasing deactivation at higher presentation frequencies even following SD, the observed state modulations of temporal responses likely represent temporal limitations in object processing as opposed to task disengagement.