Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, populations from many countries have been confined at home for extended periods of time in stressful environmental and media conditions. Cross-sectional studies already evidence deleterious psychological consequences, with poor sleep as a risk factor for impaired mental health. However, limitations of cross-sectional assessments are response bias tendencies, and the inability to track daily fluctuations in specific subjective experiences in extended confinement conditions. In a prospective study conducted across three European countries, we queried participants (N = 166) twice a day through an online interface about their sleep quality and their negative psychological experiences for two consecutive weeks. Focus was set on between-and within-person associations of subjective sleep quality with daytime experiences such as rumination, psychotic-like experiences, and somatic complaints about the typical symptoms of the coronavirus. Results show that daily reports of country-specific COVID-19 deaths predicted increased negative mood, psychotic-like experiences and somatic complaints during the same day, and decreased subjective sleep quality the following night. Disrupted sleep was globally associated with negative psychological outcomes during the study period, and a relatively poorer night of sleep predicted increased rumination, psychotic-like experiences, and somatic complaints the following day. This temporal association was not paralleled by daytime mental complaints predicting relatively poorer sleep quality on the following night. Our findings show that night-to-night changes in sleep quality predict how individuals cope the next day with daily challenges induced by home confinement.

Sleep continuity and efficacy are essential for optimal cognitive functions. How sleep fragmentation (SF) impairs cognitive functioning, and especially cognitive fatigue (CF), remains elusive. We investigated the impact of induced SF on CF through the TloadDback task, measuring interindividual variability in working memory capacity. Sixteen participants underwent an adaptation polysomnography night and three consecutive nights, once in a SF condition induced by non-awakening auditory stimulations, once under restorative sleep (RS) condition, counterbalanced within-subject. In both conditions, participants were administered memory, vigilance, inhibition and verbal fluency testing, and for CF the TloadDback, as well as sleep questionnaires and fatigue and sleepiness visual analog scales were administered. Subjective fatigue increased and sleep architecture was altered after SF (reduced sleep efficiency, percentage of N3 and REM, number of NREM and REM phases) despite similar total sleep time. At the behavioral level, only inhibition deteriorated after SF, and CF similarly evolved in RS and SF conditions. In line with prior research, we show that SF disrupts sleep architecture and exerts a deleterious impact on subjective fatigue and inhibition. However, young healthy participants appear able to compensate for CF induced by three consecutive SF nights. Further studies should investigate SF effects in extended and/or pathological disruption settings.

No abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, populations from many countries have been confined at home for extended periods of time in stressful environmental and media conditions. Cross-sectional studies already evidenced deleterious psychological consequences, with poor sleep as a risk factor for impaired mental health. However, limitations of cross-sectional assessments are response bias tendencies, and the inability to track daily fluctuations in specific subjective experiences in extended confinement conditions. In a prospective study conducted across three European countries, we queried participants (N = 166) twice a day through an online interface about their sleep quality and their negative psychological experiences for two consecutive weeks. Focus was set on between-and within-person associations of subjective sleep quality with daytime experiences such as rumination, psychotic-like experiences, and somatic complaints about the typical symptoms of the coronavirus. Results show that daily reports of country-specific COVID-19 deaths predicted increased negative mood, psychotic-like experiences and somatic complaints during the same day, and decreased subjective sleep quality the following night. Disrupted sleep was globally associated with negative psychological outcomes during the study period, and a relatively poorer night of sleep predicted increased rumination, psychotic-like experiences, and somatic complaints the following day. This temporal association was unidirectional since daytime reports of negative mental experiences were not associated with poor sleep quality on the following night. Our findings show that night-to-night changes in sleep quality predict how individuals cope the next day with daily challenges induced by home confinement

No abstract