Short‐term and long‐term phenotypic stability of actigraphic sleep metrics involving repeated sleep loss and recovery

Abstract

SummaryFor the first time, we determined whether actigraphic‐assessed sleep measures show inter‐individual differences and intra‐individual stability during baseline (BL) and recovery (REC) phases surrounding repeated total sleep deprivation (TSD). We conducted a 5‐day experiment at Months 2 and 4 in two separate studies (N = 11). During each experiment, sleep measures were collected via wrist actigraphy during two BL 8 h time‐in‐bed (TIB) nights (B1, B2) and during two REC 8–10 h TIB nights (R1, R2). Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) assessed actigraphic measure long‐term stability between 2 and 4 months for (1) the pre‐experimental phase before BL; and (2) the BL (B1 + B2), REC (R1 + R2), and BL and REC average (BL + REC) phases; and short‐term stability at Month 2 and at Month 4; and (3) between B1 versus B2 and R1 versus R2 in each 5‐day experiment. Nearly all ICCs during the pre‐experimental, BL, REC, and BL + REC phases were moderate to almost perfect (0.446–0.970) between Months 2 and 4. B1 versus B2 ICCs were more stable (0.440–0.899) than almost all R1 versus R2 ICCs (−0.696 to 0.588) at Month 2 and 4. Actigraphic sleep measures show phenotypic long‐term stability during BL and REC surrounding repeated TSD between 2 and 4 months. Furthermore, within each 5‐day experiment at Month 2 and 4, the two BL nights before TSD were more stable than the two REC nights following TSD, likely due to increased R1 homeostatic pressure. Given the consistency of actigraphic measures across the short‐term and long‐term, they can serve as biomarkers to predict physiological and neurobehavioral responses to sleep loss.