Inconsistent sleep duration and VAT brain activation. Longer WE relative to WD sleep duration was associated with greater deactivation of DMN during VAT including right AG, MFG, precuneus, and bilateral SFG (z-map). For the 3-ball condition, longer WE relative to WD sleep duration was positively associated with greater deactivation of DMN regions (upper panel left), whereas for the 4-ball condition, it was associated with deactivation of only the right AG (upper panel right). The beneficial effect was not observed for the low VA-load condition (2-ball tracking). The color bar shows the z-score. The plots on the bottom are only for the visualization of the direction of effects and not for the inference (3-ball: lower panel left; 4-ball: lower panel right). The x-axis of the plots depicts inconsistent sleep duration calculated as WE–WD differences of sleep duration divided by an individual’s average sleep duration for all nights (see Methods). The y-axis depicts t-score for VAT brain activation/deactivation during “TRACK” in contrast to “DO NOT TRACK” epochs.