Medeiros Luciane de Souza, Santos Flavia H, Almeida Alana Peixoto, Alves Davyd M O, Rocca Renan Remaeh, Tufik Sergio, Ximenes-da-Silva Adriana
Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde - Maceió - AL - Brazil.
University College Dublin, UCD School of Psychology, D04 V1W8 - Dublin - Ireland.
Sleep Sci. 2022 Jan-Mar;15(1):17-25. doi: 10.5935/1984-0063.20210022.
Poor sleep quality negatively affects cognitive performance. However, there are limited data on sex differences in functional outcomes of impaired sleep on cognition. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the association between sleep quality and performance of men and women in cognitive tests.
After screening, 97 individuals with and without insomnia complaints participated of this study. Behavioral scales were evaluated using a number of instruments and the sleep pattern was recorded by actigraph. Subsequently, the participants were submitted to visuospatial/verbal working memory (WM), visual attention, and psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT).
The actigraphic recordings indicated that men sleep later (d=-0.56, p<0.05), fall asleep faster (d=0.42, p<0.05), showed shorter sleep duration (d=0.53, p<0.05), and more sleep fragmentation than women (d=-0.41, p<0.05). The performance in the cognitive tasks also showed sex differences: the men showed better performance in the visuospatial short-term memory (d=-0.78, p<0.05); verbal (d=-0.61, p<0.05), and visuospatial-WM tests (d=-0.84, p<0.05); they also responded faster in the PVT (d=0.69, p<0.05), although made more mistakes (d=-0.85, p<0.01). Longer sleep latency was associated with poor performance in visual attention (r=0.52, p<0.05) and verbal memory tasks (r=-0.30, p<0.05) in men.
Our results suggest that difficulty in falling asleep was associated with cognitive impairment, especially in men. Sex differences in sleep quality and cognitive skills should be taken into account in future research in this field.
睡眠质量差会对认知表现产生负面影响。然而，关于睡眠受损对认知功能结果的性别差异的数据有限。因此，本研究的目的是评估睡眠质量与男性和女性在认知测试中的表现之间的关联。
经过筛选，97名有或无失眠主诉的个体参与了本研究。使用多种工具评估行为量表，并通过活动记录仪记录睡眠模式。随后，参与者接受视觉空间/言语工作记忆（WM）、视觉注意力和心理运动警觉性测试（PVT）。
活动记录仪记录表明，男性入睡时间更晚（d = -0.56，p < 0.05），入睡速度更快（d = 0.42，p < 0.05），睡眠时间更短（d = 0.53，p < 0.05），且睡眠片段化比女性更多（d = -0.41，p < 0.05）。认知任务中的表现也存在性别差异：男性在视觉空间短期记忆（d = -0.78，p < 0.05）、言语（d = -0.61，p < 0.05）和视觉空间工作记忆测试（d = -0.84，p < 0.05）中表现更好；他们在PVT中的反应也更快（d = 0.69，p < 0.05），尽管犯错更多（d = -0.85，p < 0.01）。男性较长的睡眠潜伏期与视觉注意力（r = 0.52，p < 0.05）和言语记忆任务（r = -0.30，p < 0.05）中的不良表现相关。
我们的结果表明，入睡困难与认知障碍有关，尤其是在男性中。在该领域未来的研究中应考虑睡眠质量和认知技能的性别差异。
