Do you have trouble falling asleep, or waking frequently during the night? It could be because of how your brain is wired, and may be affecting your mental and physical health, according to new research.
A study conducted by researchers in Canada and Singapore, using patient-reported sleep, health and lifestyle factors, as well as brain imaging, has identified five distinct sleep profiles.
The research, published in PLOS Biology, found that each of the profiles showed unique patterns of brain network organization, and was linked to different mental and physical health traits. The researchers analyzed data from 770 healthy adults aged between 22 and 36 years of age from the WU-Minn Human Connectome Project (HCP), a study investigating the relationship between human brain circuits and behavior.
All participants filled in questionnaires about their lifestyle, mental and physical health, personality and objective measures of physical health and cognition. They also completed sleep health questionnaires to define different dimensions of sleep, including duration, satisfaction and disturbances.
In addition to the self-reported questionnaires, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to identify neural signatures of their sleep profiles.
The researchers outlined their objective, saying that: “[I]n this study, we sought to take a multidimensional data-driven approach to identify sleep-biopsychosocial profiles that simultaneously relate self-reported sleep patterns to biopsychosocial factors of health, cognition, and lifestyle in the [healthcare professional] cohort of healthy young adults. We further explored patterns of brain network organization associated with each profile to better understand their neurobiological underpinnings.”
The researchers identified 5 profiles related to 118 biopsychosocial measures — spanning cognitive performance, physical and mental health, personality traits, affects, substance use, and demographics — as follows:
Profile 1: generally poor sleep, with decreased sleep satisfaction, longer time to fall asleep, more sleep disturbances, and daytime impairment. This was linked to depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, internalizing behavior, fear, anger, and stress.
Profile 2: higher complaints of daytime impairment without complaints of sleep difficulties, suggesting sleep resilience, linked to attentional problems, such as inattention, ADHD, low conscientiousness, fear, anger and stress.
Profile 3: mostly characterized by the use of sleep medication. This was linked to worse performance in visual episodic memory and emotional recognition, but also to satisfaction in social relationships.
Profile 4: insufficient duration of sleep (less than 6–7 hours per night), which was associated with worse accuracy and longer reaction time at multiple cognitive tasks, delayed reward discounting, language, fluid intelligence, and social cognition, as well as more aggressive behavior and lower agreeableness.
Profile 5: sleep disturbances, such as multiple awakenings, nocturia (waking frequently to urinate), and breathing issues, as well as pain or temperature imbalance. This group tended to show aggressive behavior, worse cognitive performance, anxiety, thought problems and internalisation, and substance abuse.
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