Internet publication
Is short sleep bad for the brain? Brain structure and cognitive function in short sleepers
- Abstract:
- Many sleep less than recommended without experiencing daytime tiredness. According to prevailing views, short sleep increases risk of lower brain health and cognitive function. Chronic mild sleep deprivation could cause undetected sleep debt, negatively affecting cognitive function and brain health. However, it is possible that some have less sleep need and are more resistant to negative effects of sleep loss. We investigated this question using a combined cross-sectional and longitudinal sample of 47,029 participants (age 20-89 years) with measures of self-reported sleep, including 51,295 MRIs of the brain and cognitive tests. 701 participants who reported to sleep < 6 hours did not experience daytime tiredness or sleep problems. These short sleepers showed significantly larger regional brain volumes than both short sleepers with daytime tiredness and sleep problems (n = 1619) and participants sleeping the recommended 7-8 hours (n = 3754). However, both groups of short sleepers showed slightly lower general cognitive function, 0.16 and 0.19 standard deviations, respectively. Analyses using acelerometer-estimated sleep duration confirmed the findings, and the associations remained after controlling for body mass index, depression symptoms, income and education. The results suggest that some people can cope with less sleep without obvious negative consequences for brain morphometry, in line with a view on sleep need as individualized. Tiredness and sleep problems seem to be more relevant for brain structural differences than sleep duration per se. However, the slightly lower performance on tests of general cognitive function warrants closer examination by experimental designs in natural settings.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Not peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Pre-print, pdf, 1.2MB, Terms of use)
-
(Preview, Supplementary materials, pdf, 1.0MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1101/2022.12.22.521614
Authors
- Host title:
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
- Publication date:
- 2022-12-22
- DOI:
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
1317099
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1317099
- Deposit date:
-
2022-12-24
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Fjell et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record