Physiological synchrony in electrodermal activity predicts decreased vigilant attention induced by sleep deprivation

Abstract

Introduction: When multiple individuals are presented with narrative movie or audio clips, their electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate show significant similarities. Higher levels of such inter-subject physiological synchrony are related with higher levels of attention toward the narrative, as for instance expressed by more correctly answered questions about the narrative. We here investigate whether physiological synchrony in EDA and heart rate during watching of movie clips predicts performance on a subsequent vigilant attention task among participants exposed to a night of total sleep deprivation.

Methods: We recorded EDA and heart rate of 54 participants during a night of total sleep deprivation. Every hour from 22:00 to 07:00 participants watched a 10-min movie clip during which we computed inter-subject physiological synchrony. Afterwards, they answered questions about the movie and performed the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) to capture attentional performance.

Results: We replicated findings that inter-subject correlations in EDA and heart rate predicted the number of correct answers on questions about the movie clips. Furthermore, we found that inter-subject correlations in EDA, but not in heart rate, predicted PVT performance. Individuals' mean EDA and heart rate also predicted their PVT performance. For EDA, inter-subject correlations explained more variance of PVT performance than individuals' mean EDA.

Discussion: Together, these findings confirm the association between physiological synchrony and attention. Physiological synchrony in EDA does not only capture the attentional processing during the time that it is determined, but also proves valuable for capturing more general changes in the attentional state of monitored individuals.

Keywords: electrodermal activity; heart rate; inter-subject correlation; physiological synchrony; sleep deprivation.

Figure 1

The experiment consisted of 10 blocks of a 10 min movie clip, followed by questions about the movie, a 10 min vigilance task and the Stanford sleepiness scale. These blocks started each hour from 22:00 to 07:00 o'clock.

Figure 2

Inter-subject correlations in EDA (A; ISC-EDA) and heart rate (B; ISC-HR) for each individual and each movie clip ordered from low to high. Each marker refers to the participant-to-group inter-subject correlations of a participant. Filled markers depict inter-subject correlations significantly higher than chance, open markers depict inter-subject correlations not higher than chance level.

Figure 3

Inter-subject correlations in EDA (A; ISC-EDA) and heart rate (B; ISC-HR) for each individual and each movie compared to a permuted inter-subject correlations obtained by not matching the movies between participants. Blue lines depict participants where the permuted inter-subject correlations are lower than the original values, orange lines depict participants where the permuted inter-subject correlations are higher than the original values.

Figure 4

Number of correct answers to questions about the content of the movie over the course of the night. Markers depict the mean across participants, shaded area depicts the standard deviation.

Figure 5

PVT lapse probability over the course of the night. The markers depict the median across participants, shaded area depict the 25–75th percentile.

Figure 6

Inter-subject correlations in EDA (A) and heart rate (HR; B) over the course of the night. Markers depict the mean across participants, shaded area depicts the standard deviation.

Figure 7

(A) Phasic EDA and (B) heart rate (HR) during the 10 movies over the course of the night. The markers depict the median across participants, shaded area depict the 25–75th percentile.