Mind & behavior · 2022
Did rats kept awake for 10 hours struggle to adapt when the picture that earned a reward changed?
Yes. Rats kept awake for 10 hours before the first session with the changed reward rule had more difficulty adapting than rats whose sleep was undisturbed. In later sessions, that difficulty persisted even though the groups completed similar numbers of trials, suggesting that fatigue alone might not explain the result.
Details
In this animal experiment, rats learned to choose one of two pictures on a touchscreen to earn a sugar pellet. After they met a performance target, researchers switched which picture earned the reward. One group was kept awake for 10 hours before the first session with the new rule; the comparison group had undisturbed sleep.
During that first session, sleep-deprived rats completed only a fraction of the trials completed by the comparison group. In later sessions, they completed similar numbers of trials but still struggled to adjust to the changed rule. This pattern suggests that sleep loss affected the ability to change behavior in response to new feedback, rather than merely reducing how much work the rats completed.
The findings suggest an effect beyond fatigue, but do not establish that fatigue played no role. The abstract does not report the sample size or the numerical size and statistical uncertainty of the adaptation difficulty. This was a rat experiment, not a direct test of human decision-making.
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