Circadian misalignment impairs ability to suppress visual distractions

• Published in: Psychophysiology 2020-02, Vol.57 (2), p.e13485-n/a
• Main Authors: Smit, Andrea N., Michalik, Mateusz, Livingstone, Ashley C., Mistlberger, Ralph E., McDonald, John J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; attention; Attention - physiology; chronotype; Circadian Rhythm - physiology; Circadian rhythms; Cognitive ability; distraction; Driving ability; Evoked Potentials - physiology; Female; Humans; Information processing; Male; N2pc; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; social jetlag; Time Factors; Visual Perception - physiology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0048-5772; 1469-8986; 1540-5958
• DOI: 10.1111/psyp.13485

Evening‐type individuals often perform poorly in the morning because of a mismatch between internal circadian time and external social time, a condition recognized as social jet lag. Performance impairments near the morning circadian (~24 hr) trough have been attributed to deficits in attention, but the nature of the impairment is unknown. Using electrophysiological indices of attentional selection (N2pc) and suppression (PD), we show that evening‐type individuals have a specific disability in suppressing irrelevant visual distractions. More specifically, evening‐type individuals managed to suppress a salient distractor in an afternoon testing session, as evidenced by a PD, but were less able to suppress the distractor in a morning testing session, as evidenced by an attenuated PD and a concomitant distractor‐elicited N2pc. Morning chronotypes, who would be well past their circadian trough at the time of testing, did not show this deficit at either test time. These results indicate that failure to filter out irrelevant stimuli at an early stage of perceptual processing contributes to impaired cognitive functioning at nonoptimal times of day and may underlie real‐world performance impairments, such as distracted driving, that have been associated with circadian mismatch. Evening‐type individuals perform poorly in the morning, when their internal circadian time is out of sync with external time. Their performance decrements may arise from difficulties in paying attention, but the extent of the attention deficit is unknown. Using neurophysiological measures, we show that evening‐type individuals retain the ability to search for objects of interest but not the ability to suppress salient distractors in the morning. The suppression deficit was observed roughly 3 hr after the beginning of the morning rush‐hour commute in the region. Thus, one implication of our findings is that millions of individuals make their way to school and work each day at a time when their ability to prevent distraction is severely compromised.