Mason Gina M, Cohen Zachary L, Obeysekare Jessica, Saletin Jared M, Sharkey Katherine M
Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02906, USA.
Sleep Research Laboratory, E.P. Bradley Hospital, Providence, RI, USA.
Sleep Adv. 2024 Sep 16;5(1):zpae068. doi: 10.1093/sleepadvances/zpae068. eCollection 2024.
Sleep loss is common during the perinatal period; however, few studies have assessed potential consequences of insufficient sleep for postnatal emotional responding, a key contributor to parenting behaviors with implications for parent-infant bonding and mental health. To generate hypotheses for future work assessing perinatal sleep and emotion-related outcomes, this pilot study explored whether prenatal sleep duration predicted postnatal emotional responding in a sample at risk for postpartum depression.
Participants were nine birthing parents with a prior mood disorder who were not in a current episode at enrollment. We estimated sleep with actigraphy collected for 1 week at 33 weeks' gestation and at 2 and 6 weeks postpartum. Following each week, participants completed an emotional evaluation task, rating the valence and arousal of standardized images from the International Affective Picture System. We tested whether average prenatal (33 weeks) nighttime sleep duration predicted concurrent and future responsiveness to emotional images, quantified by participants' reaction times and arousal/valence ratings.
duration predicted , both concurrently and at 2 weeks postpartum ( ≤ .05), as well as at 2 and 6 weeks postpartum (s ≤ .043).
In this small sample of birthing parents at risk for postpartum depression, shorter prenatal sleep duration predicted faster reactions to emotional stimuli and blunted arousal responses to negative images. Although preliminary, these findings justify further study of the role of prenatal sleep in postpartum emotional responses and how these factors may impact parent-infant outcomes.
围产期睡眠不足很常见；然而，很少有研究评估睡眠不足对产后情绪反应的潜在影响，产后情绪反应是育儿行为的一个关键因素，对母婴联结和心理健康有影响。为了为未来评估围产期睡眠和情绪相关结果的研究提出假设，这项试点研究探讨了产前睡眠时间是否能预测产后抑郁症风险样本中的产后情绪反应。
参与者为9名有既往情绪障碍的分娩父母，入组时未处于当前发作期。我们使用在妊娠33周、产后2周和6周收集的1周活动记录仪数据来估计睡眠情况。每周结束后，参与者完成一项情绪评估任务，对来自国际情感图片系统的标准化图像的效价和唤醒程度进行评分。我们测试了产前（33周）平均夜间睡眠时间是否能预测对情绪图像的即时和未来反应，通过参与者的反应时间和唤醒/效价评分来量化。
睡眠时间预测了即时反应以及产后2周时的反应（≤.05），以及产后2周和6周时的反应（s≤.043）。
在这个产后抑郁症风险的分娩父母小样本中，较短的产前睡眠时间预测了对情绪刺激的更快反应以及对负面图像的唤醒反应减弱。尽管这些发现是初步的，但它们证明有必要进一步研究产前睡眠在产后情绪反应中的作用，以及这些因素可能如何影响母婴结局。
