Correlated Fluctuations of Daytime Skin Temperature and Vigilance

Skin temperature shows spontaneous ultradian fluctuations during everyday-life wakefulness. Previous work showed that mild manipulations of skin temperature affect human sleep and vigilance, presumably by influencing neuronal systems involved in both thermal sensing and arousal regulation. We therefore examined whether fluctuations in skin temperature are associated with those in vigilance level under conditions similar to everyday-life situations requiring sustained attention. Eight healthy participants (30.1 +/- 8.1 years, M +/- SD) participated in a 2-day protocol, during which vigilance and skin temperature were assessed 4 times per day in a silent, dimly lit, temperature-controlled room. Vigilance was assessed by measuring reaction speed and lapses on a novel sustained vigilance task specifically designed to increase lapse rate and range of reaction times. Skin temperature was sampled at 30-second intervals from 3 locations: distal, intermediate, and proximal temperatures were obtained from the middle finger (T-finger), the wrist (T-wrist), and the infraclavicular area (T-chest), respectively. Furthermore, 3 distal to proximal gradients were calculated. Mixed-effect regression analyses were used to evaluate the association of the fluctuations in temperatures and gradients and those in response speed and lapse probability. Especially the spontaneous fluctuations in proximal temperature were negatively associated with fluctuations in response speed and positively with lapse rate. If individual T-chest temperature ranges were classified into 10 deciles, they accounted for 23% of the variance in response speed and 11% of the variance in lapse rate. The findings indicate coupling between the spontaneous fluctuations in skin temperature and vigilance during the day and are compatible with the hypothesis of overlap in brain networks involved in the regulation of temperature and vigilance. From an applied point of view, especially proximal skin temperature assessment may be of use in vigilance monitoring.