Scientists identify five distinct sleep profiles and health links
Researchers have pinpointed five types of sleep patterns among young adults, each associated with specific mental health issues and brain activity differences. The study highlights how sleep disturbances, aid use, and short duration connect to cognition, emotions, and behaviors. These profiles offer new insights into sleep's broad impact on well-being.
A team led by Valeria Kebets at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, examined sleep's multifaceted effects by analyzing seven sleep-related factors—such as satisfaction and aid use—alongside 118 measures of cognition, substance use, and mental health. They gathered data from 770 healthy US adults aged 22 to 36, using cognitive tests, sleep surveys, and brain scans.
The first profile features poor sleep, including greater disturbances, low satisfaction, and longer time to fall asleep, tied to worse mental health like depression, anxiety, anger, fear, and stress. Brain scans revealed decreased connectivity between self-reflection networks, such as the temporoparietal, and attention networks like somatomotor and dorsal attention, potentially leading to rumination over external focus.
The second profile shows mental health challenges, especially inattention, despite decent sleep quality. Kebets describes this as 'sleep resilience,' noting, “So worse mental health, which doesn’t necessarily affect sleep.” Unlike the first group, it lacks those specific brain connectivity issues, suggesting they stem from sleep problems rather than mental health alone.
Profile three links sleep aid use—ranging from medications to teas—to poorer memory and emotional recognition, with reduced connectivity in vision, memory, and emotion brain regions.
The fourth involves under 7 hours of sleep nightly, correlating with reduced accuracy and slower reactions in emotional processing, language, and social skills tests, plus more aggression and heightened brain network connectivity, akin to sleep deprivation effects.
Finally, the fifth profile includes frequent awakenings, associated with impaired language processing, working memory, anxiety, substance misuse, and aggression.
Kebets emphasizes, “Sleep is so central to your sense of well-being, and it’s related to cognition, to physical health, to mental health, to substance use – so many aspects of your functioning.” The study, published in PLOS Biology (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.300339), found only associations, not causation, and notes not all participants fit neatly; the mostly white sample may overlook other ethnic profiles.