Sustained arousal and attention after XXXX .

@entity1 @entity131
Clinicians report that @entity1 with @entity131 ( @entity131 ) often have difficulty with tasks requiring sustained attention, and there are neuroanatomical and neurophysiological reasons to expect such deficits. Nevertheless, laboratory measures of sustained attention or vigilance in @entity131 have produced conflicting results. These inconsistencies may be due to @entity1 heterogeneity as well as the fact that vigilance performance is dependent on highly specific features of the task design. We developed a visual vigilance task in which the influence of non-attentional factors was minimized and task difficulty for @entity1 and controls made comparable. Performance was characterized with respect to vigilance level as well as vigilance decrement, using measures of perceptual discrimination, response bias, reaction time and reaction time variability. Twenty-six @entity1 with recent @entity131 and 18 control subjects were tested on this task. A MANOVA of ranked scores revealed significantly different @entity1 and control performance overall. Initial level of performance (vigilance level) was slower and more variable for @entity1 than controls, and @entity1 showed more conservative response biases. Deterioration over time (vigilance decrement) was steeper for @entity1 than controls for reaction time, reaction time variability, and response bias. Deterioration in accuracy (D') did not differ significantly between @entity1 and controls. Performance was not related to available measures of injury severity. Hypotheses relating arousal mechanisms to vigilance performance are discussed.
