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Insomnia Symptom Severity Modulates The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Attentional Biases to Emotional Information

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Abstract

The present study evaluated the effect of experimental sleep deprivation on attentional biases to emotional information among a sample of 40 healthy, young adults. Participants were randomized into either a total sleep deprivation (i.e., 28 consecutive hours awake) or sleep control (i.e., 8-h sleep opportunity) condition. Participants also completed a modified version of the Dot Probe Task to assess attentional biases to positive and negative information and the insomnia severity index (ISI) to assess current insomnia symptom severity. While controlling for ISI scores, acute sleep deprivation was not associated with a greater bias to negative stimuli. In contrast, sleep deprivation predicted a significantly reduced bias to positive stimuli, but only among participants with relative low ISI scores. The present findings suggest that young adults with low levels of insomnia symptoms are particularly susceptible to the effects of sleep deprivation; such that acute sleep loss can reduce their natural tendencies to attend to positive information in the environment.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Michigan Psychoneuroendocrinology Affective Laboratory staff, particularly Andrew Garton, Rebecca Mulder, Tonia Ballantyne, Lara Fawaz, Allie Hammond, and Rachel Cannon who assisted in data collection. Christopher Drake has received research support from Merck, Jazz, Aladdin Dreamer, Actelion, Pernix, Eisai, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Christopher Drake has received a speaker honorarium from Merck.

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology, University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation, and the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students. All grants were awarded to IV. The funding source had no role in the study design, data collection, analyses, or manuscript preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, 3535 Market Street, Suite 670, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Ivan Vargas

  2. Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Ivan Vargas

  3. Sleep Disorders and Research Center, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI, USA

    Christopher L. Drake

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Nestor L. Lopez-Duran

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  1. Ivan Vargas
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  2. Christopher L. Drake
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  3. Nestor L. Lopez-Duran
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Correspondence to Ivan Vargas.

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Ivan Vargas and Nestor Lopez-Duran declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The present study was in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

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Vargas, I., Drake, C.L. & Lopez-Duran, N.L. Insomnia Symptom Severity Modulates The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Attentional Biases to Emotional Information. Cogn Ther Res 41, 842–852 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-017-9859-4

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