Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide, affecting millions of people and exposing them to home quarantine, isolation, and social distancing. While recent reports showed increased distress and depressive/anxiety state related to COVID-19 crisis, we investigated how home quarantine affected sleep parameters in healthy individuals.
Methods
160 healthy individuals who were in home quarantine in April 2020 for at least one month participated in this study. Participants rated and compared their quantitative sleep parameters (time to go to bed, sleep duration, getting-up time) and sleep quality factors, pre-and during home quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, participants chronotype was determined to see if sleep parameters are differentially affected in different chronotypes.
Results
The time to fall asleep and get-up in the morning were significantly delayed in all participants, indicating a significant circadian misalignment. Sleep quality was reported to be significantly poorer in all participants and chronotypes, and included more daily disturbances (more sleep disturbances, higher daily dysfunctions due to low quality of sleep) and less perceived sleep quality (lower subjective sleep quality, longer time taken to fall asleep at night, more use of sleep medication for improving sleep quality) during home quarantine.
Conclusions
Home quarantine due to COVID-19 pandemic has a detrimental impact on sleep quality. Online interventions including self-help sleep programs, stress management, relaxation practices, stimulus control, sleep hygiene, and mindfulness training are available interventions in the current situation.
Objective Individuals with attention deficit- hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a higher propensity to mind wandering. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which show reduced functionality in individuals with ADHD, are involved in mind wandering.Methods Forty adults with or without ADHD received transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in three different conditions including anodal left dlPFC/cathodal right vmPFC stimulation, the reversed montage, and a sham stimulation. During stimulation, in each session, participants performed the sustained attention to response task as a measure of attentional performance, and a task-unrelated thoughts task to monitor mind wandering.Results A significant main effect of stimulation condition was identified for attentional performance and task-unrelated thoughts. Anodal left dlPFC coupled with cathodal right vmPFC stimulation improved attention task performance and reduced mind wandering. Furthermore, higher baseline mind wandering and ADHD scores independent from the diagnostic group were associated with larger beneficial effects of tDCS on mind wandering.Conclusion These results described the role of the left dlPFC and the right vmPFC on attentional performance and mind wandering in adults with and without ADHD. tDCS had beneficial effects on mind wandering, and attention with simultaneous anodal left dlPFC and cathodal right vmPFC stimulation, and the size of the effects on mind wandering depended on mind wandering before intervention, and ADHD scores.
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