Vitali Helene, Campus Claudio, Giorgetti Laura, Famà Francesco, Mattioli Pietro, Arnaldi Dario, Gori Monica
Unit for Visually Impaired People, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy.
Clinical Neurophysiology, IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genova, Italy.
PLoS One. 2025 Jul 2;20(7):e0327521. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0327521. eCollection 2025.
Sleep health is a topic of great interest in recent years. However, it is still often undervalued in vulnerable populations, such as those with sensory disorders. A higher percentage of blind individuals experience circadian disorders, and their dreams have different sensory contents. However, many questions remain unanswered regarding the impact of blindness on overall sleep structure and how circadian desynchronization may influence them. Additionally, understanding how changes in the dream sensory contents and sleep alterations may affect daily life skills, such as spatial cognition which tends to be more challenging in blind individuals, is relevant for further comprehension of the vision role on our perception. The BLINDREAM protocol aims to investigate the interrelationships of all these aspects. We aim to collect one week of data from 20 blind adults and 20 sighted age-matched controls. Participants' sleep and circadian rhythm will be assessed through one-night home polysomnography, melatonin sampling, one-week actigraphy monitoring, and questionnaires. Dream activity will be measured through a one-week voice-recorded dream diary and questionnaires. Finally, a neuropsychological assessment of spatial cognition will be conducted. Capturing the dynamics of subjective experiences phase-locked to neural and physiological evaluation both between and within individuals, this approach can contribute to our understanding of the impact of blindness on sleep processes.
睡眠健康是近年来备受关注的一个话题。然而，在弱势群体中，如患有感觉障碍的人群，睡眠健康仍常常被低估。较高比例的盲人存在昼夜节律紊乱，而且他们的梦境有不同的感官内容。然而，关于失明对整体睡眠结构的影响以及昼夜节律失调如何影响他们，仍有许多问题没有答案。此外，了解梦境感官内容的变化和睡眠改变如何影响日常生活技能，如空间认知（这在盲人中往往更具挑战性），对于进一步理解视觉在我们感知中的作用至关重要。“BLINDREAM方案”旨在研究所有这些方面的相互关系。我们的目标是从20名成年盲人及20名年龄匹配的视力正常对照者那里收集一周的数据。将通过一晚的家庭多导睡眠监测、褪黑素采样、一周的活动记录仪监测和问卷调查来评估参与者的睡眠和昼夜节律。梦境活动将通过一周的语音记录梦境日记和问卷调查来测量。最后，将进行空间认知的神经心理学评估。这种方法捕捉了个体之间和个体内部与神经和生理评估锁相的主观体验动态，有助于我们理解失明对睡眠过程的影响。
