Economic decision-making and the sleep-deprived brain
Introduction As acceptable temporal boundaries of business and social activities gradually disappear with pervasive connectivity, an increasing number of persons will be called upon to make decisions at times that our predecessors reserved for sleep. In the last decade, there has been a surge in interest in the neural underpinnings of decision-making, particularly when individuals are faced with risk [1, 2]. Yet, despite the steady increase in numbers of persons who make decisions following chronic or acute sleep loss, there remains relatively little work about how sleep deprivation (SD) alters decision-making. Risky decisions are those where the outcomes of one or more potential choices are probabilistic; that is, different outcomes might occurwith knownor estimated probabilities (e.g., gambling on roulette). The broad appeal, detailed characterization, ease of experimental design, and ready incentive compatibility have made risky decision-making a common target for research in decision neuroscience or “neuroeconomics” [1, 3, 4].Moreover, risky decisions often must be made under conditions of reduced sleep (and/or other deleterious states), as in the cases of emergency personnel, physicians, financial markets, and even policy makers. For these reasons, an improved understanding of risky decision-making in sleep-deprived persons could have important real-world consequences.