Sleep has been classically described as an all-or-nothing global phenomenon. However, recent research strongly suggests that this view requires tempering.I will present here evidence, from invasive and non-invasive recordings in animals and humans, show that neural activity typically associated with sleep can locally occur during wakefulness. I will also show how these sleep intrusions, occurring spontaneously and modulated by pharmacological means, are associated with impaired performance during cognitive tasks. I will also discuss the phenomenology of local sleep (i.e., what it feels like when your brain is partially asleep). Based on these findings, I will propose that occurrences of local sleep could represent the neural mechanism underlying many attentional lapses. In particular, I will argue that a unique physiological event such as local sleep could account for a diversity of behavioral and phenomenological outcomes from sluggish to impulsive responses, mind wandering and mind blanking. I will finally show how the local sleep framework can be extended to examine inter-individual differences by focusing on a clinical population with known sleep and attentional disorders: ADHD.
Google meet: https://meet.google.com/uaw-keoy-xbj