Abstract
Introduction
Individuals with insomnia report poor sleep quality and non-restorative sleep, and often exhibit irregular sleep patterns over days and weeks. First night effects and logistical challenges make it difficult to measure these sleep characteristics in the laboratory. Also, sensitivity to sleep disruption from obtrusive measurement devices confounds sleep measurements in people with insomnia in their naturalistic setting. Non-contact sleep measurement devices have the potential to address these issues and enable ecologically valid, longitudinal characterization of sleep in individuals with insomnia. Here we use a non-contact device – the SleepScore Max (SleepScore Labs) – to assess the sleep of individuals with chronic insomnia, compared to healthy sleeper controls, in their home setting.
Methods
As part of a larger study, 13 individuals with chronic insomnia (ages 25-60y, 7 males) and 8 healthy sleeper controls (ages 21-46y, 6 females) participated in an at-home sleep monitoring study. Enrollment criteria included an age range of 18-65y and, for the insomnia group, ICSD-3 criteria for chronic insomnia with no other clinically relevant illness. Participants used the non-contact sleep measurement device to record their sleep periods each night for 8 weeks. Sleep measurements were analyzed for group differences in both means (characterizing sleep overall) and within-subject standard deviations (characterizing sleep variability across nights), using mixed-effects regression controlling for systematic between-subject differences.
Results
Based on the non-contact sleep measurements, individuals with chronic insomnia exhibited greater variability in bedtime, time in bed, total sleep time, sleep latency, total wake time across time in bed, wakefulness after sleep onset, sleep interruptions, and estimated light sleep, compared to healthy sleeper controls (all F>5.7, P<0.05). No significant differences were found for group averages and for variability in estimated deep and REM sleep.
Conclusion
In this group of individuals with chronic insomnia, a non-contact device used to characterize sleep naturalistically captured enhanced variability across nights in multiple aspects of sleep stereotypical of sleep disturbances in chronic insomnia, differentiating the sample statistically significantly from healthy sleeper controls.
Support (if any)
NIH grant KL2TR002317; research devices provided by SleepScore Labs.
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