Measuring neurobehavioral performance during sleep reduction on monophasic, biphasic, and polyphasic schedules

Based on a significant amount of preliminary observational, experimental, and theoretical evidence it was hypothesized that a polyphasic sleep schedule would allow better neurobehavioral performance than a traditional monophasic sleep schedule under the specific conditions of quasi. Continuous work (18 neurobehavioral test sessions per day) and dramatically reduced total sleep time. The generally accepted minimum monophasic sleep time for maintenance of baseline levels of neurobehavioral performance is 4.5 h to 5.5 h per day; not necessarily maintaining baseline levels of subjective feelings of sleepiness [Home, 1992].; This study limited total scheduled sleep time to 3 h per day with the intention of cutting into the hypothesized minimal "core sleep" and increasing the possibility of observing a difference in performance on three different sleep schedules; monophasic (one 3 h sleep period per day), biphasic (two 1.5 h sleep periods per day), and polyphasic (six 30 min sleep periods per day). Based on longitudinal experimental evidence in one subject it was expected that subjects would be able to tolerate 3 h of sleep per day in all three sleep schedules, monophasic, biphasic, and polyphasic for 16 days.; Three male, 33 to 45 y.o. (mean 39.3 y.o.), laboratory subjects coped with 3 h scheduled sleep time per day for more than 2 weeks, but not without performance decrements in all sleep schedules, and not without increased subjective sleepiness. The main result of this research is that a monophasic schedule is not optimal for quasi continuous neurobehavioral work and sleep reduced below 4.5 h to 5.5 h per day. Biphasic/polyphasic sleep schedules offer scheduling advantages and statistically significant (p < 0.01) performance benefits over monophasic schedules under these conditions.