Sleepy? Doing it worst without noticing: decrease in performance but not confidence in decision-making while falling asleep
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1
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, United Kingdom
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2
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam Brain and Cognition, The Netherlands
In order to investigate metacognitive performance in drowsiness we recorded behavior and high density EEG during a perceptual discrimination task from fully awake, relaxed, drowsy and on the verge of unconscious. Previous falling asleep and sedation studies have shown that performance related ERPs in decision-making, perceptual learning and go/no-go tasks are still present -albeit changed- in early sleep stages. In this experiment, participants had to choose between two auditory stimuli with parametrically varying levels of merging and indicate how confident they were in each choice. Drowsiness levels for each trial were assessed via two independent EEG methods: alpha-theta ratio and sleep stages as defined by Hori (1994). Participants showed a decrease in discrimination abilities (d') both with increasing similarity between stimuli and increasing drowsiness. However, confidence in their decisions remained equally high in drowsy and alert states. The observed changes in behavioural measures may also be associated with differences in brain electrical potentials timed to stimuli presentation and responses. Preliminary results suggest differences in late ERPs (P3) timed to stimuli with higher amplitudes depending on wakefulness changes, specifically, Hori stage H4 (drowsy) as compared to fully awake or mildly relaxed (H1, H2). There are no noticeable differences in early ERPs (N1). Increase in amplitude also seems to occur for motor-related cortical potentials with increased drowsiness. The relationship between cortical potentials and changes in metacognitive abilities with increasing drowsiness is yet to be investigated. Overall, people seem to be able to match confidence ratings and performance reasonably well in higher drowsiness levels, though not as well as in alert. Understanding how metacognitive capacity is preserved and then lost when falling asleep may shed more light on the process of losing conscious awareness in the transition to unconsciousness.
Keywords:
Awareness,
metacognition,
drowsiness,
perceptual discrimination,
motor-related cortical potentials,
N1/P3 ERPs
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Cognition and Executive Processes
Citation:
Georgieva
S and
Bekinschtein
T
(2015). Sleepy? Doing it worst without noticing: decrease in performance but not confidence in decision-making while falling asleep.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00132
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
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Correspondence:
Ms. Stanimira Georgieva, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom, stanimira.d.georgieva@gmail.com