• Sleep · Apr 2010

    Circadian and wake-dependent influences on subjective sleepiness, cognitive throughput, and reaction time performance in older and young adults.

    • Edward J Silva, Wei Wang, Joseph M Ronda, James K Wyatt, and Jeanne F Duffy.
    • Division of Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA. esilva@rics.bwh.harvard.edu
    • Sleep. 2010 Apr 1; 33 (4): 481-90.

    Study ObjectivesTo assess circadian and homeostatic influences on subjective sleepiness and cognitive performance in older adults when sleep and waking are scheduled at different times of day; to assess changes in subjective sleepiness and cognitive performance across several weeks of an inpatient study; and to compare these findings with results from younger adults.DesignThree 24-h baseline days consisting of 16 h of wakefulness and an 8-h sleep opportunity followed by 3-beat cycles of a 20-h forced desynchrony (FD) condition; 18 20-h "days," each consisting of 13.33 h of scheduled wakefulness and 6.67 h of scheduled sleep opportunity.SettingIntensive Physiological Monitoring Unit of the Brigham and Women's Hospital General Clinical Research Center.Participants10 healthy older adults (age 64.00 +/- 5.98 y, 5 females) and 10 healthy younger adults (age 24.50 +/- 3.54 y, 5 females).InterventionsWake episodes during FD scheduled to begin 4 h earlier each day allowing for data collection at a full range of circadian phases.Measurements And ResultsSubjective sleepiness, cognitive throughput, and psychomotor vigilance assessed every 2 h throughout the study. Core body temperature (CBT) data collected throughout to assess circadian phase. Older subjects were less sleepy and performed significantly better on reaction time (RT) measures than younger subjects. Decrements among younger subjects increased in magnitude further into the experiment, while the performance of older subjects remained stable.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrate that the waking performance and alertness of healthy older subjects are less impacted by the cumulative effects of repeated exposure to adverse circadian phase than that of young adults. This suggests that there are age-related changes in the circadian promotion of alertness, in the wake-dependent decline of alertness, and/or in how these 2 regulatory systems interact in healthy aging.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…