Effects of sleep reduction on the phonological and visuospatial components of working memory

Sleep reduction impairs the performance of many tasks, so it may affect a basic cognitive process, such as working memory, crucial for the execution of a broad range of activities. Working memory has two storage components: a phonological and a visuospatial component. The objective of this study was to analyze the effects of sleep reduction for 5 days on the storage components of working memory. Thirteen undergraduate students (18.77±2.20 years of age), 5 men and 8 women, responded two N-Back tasks (auditory and visual), with three sections each (0-Back, 1-Back, and 2-Back). These tasks were performed at 13:00 h under the following conditions: before sleep reduction (control; C); on the first (SR1), fourth (SR4), and fifth (SR5) days of sleep reduction (4 h of sleep per night); and one day after they slept freely (recovery, R). Sleep reduction produced a decrement in accuracy on the auditory 2-Back section the fifth day of sleep reduction (C=87.86±13.35%; SR5=74.76±16.37%; F=14.57, p<0.01). In the visual 2-Back section accuracy decreased (C=88.10±9.95%; SR1=82.45±11.57%; SR5=77.76±14.14%; F=10.80, p<0.05), and reaction time increased (C=810.02±173.96 ms; SR1=913.51±172.25 ms; SR5=874.78±172.27 ms; F=10.80, p<0.05) on the first and fifth day of sleep reduction. In conclusion, five days of sleep reduction produces a decrease in the phonological and visuospatial storage components of working memory, which may interfere with processing verbal information and solving problems that require spatial analysis.