Slow-eye-closure and task non-responsiveness are important behavioural markers of microsleeps. This paper presents preliminary results on the neural correlates of voluntary slow-eye-closure and voluntary non-responsiveness during performance of a continuous visuomotor tracking task. Functional-MRI (fMRI), EEG, eye video, and tracking responses were recorded from 5 normal subjects while they performed a continuous visuomotor tracking task inside an MRI scanner for 10min. During this time, they were cued to simultaneously stop tracking and slowly close their eyes or stop tracking without eye-closure several times. Analysis of fMRI data revealed several regions involved in cued slow-eye-closure and cued task non-responsiveness, including occipito-parietal visual regions, midline default mode regions, and fronto-parietal attention regions. These results will be of considerable value in the interpretation of changes in BOLD activation and EEG activity associated with behavioural microsleeps.
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