Research

Hormonal

Individual susceptibility to sleep deprivation effects on Working Memory (high executive load) is genetically determined by the PER3 rs57875989 polymorphism, specifically in the PER35/5 genotype.

If you know you carry the PER35/5 genotype, be aware that your working memory under high load is highly vulnerable to even partial sleep loss. Plan to avoid complex cognitive tasks during sleep-deprived periods. If you have the PER34/4 genotype, your working memory may be more resilient, but your alertness will still decline.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Specifically, the performance of the PER34/4 homozygotes was not affected by sleep history during either the sleep restriction days or subsequent TSD, while in the PER34/5 heterozygotes, negative effects of sleep restriction were observed during the TSD period only. In the PER35/5 homozygotes, a decrement in verbal 3-back performance was quite consistently found after the first night of 6-h sleep opportunity, and was also observed during subsequent TSD
June C. Lo et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

Why this rating

Strong laboratory design but specific to a genetic subgroup.

Source

Effects of Partial and Acute Total Sleep Deprivation on Performance across Cognitive Domains, Individuals and Circadian Phase

June C. Lo et al. · PLoS ONE · 2012

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0045987

crossover · n=36Cited 331×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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