Further Evidence of the Zero-Association Between Symptoms of Insomnia and Facial Emotion Recognition-Results From a Sample of Adults in Their Late 30s.

Serge Brand,Dena Sadeghi Bahmani,René Schilling,Flora Colledge,Sebastian Ludyga,Uwe Pühse,Markus Gerber,Edith Holsboer-Trachsler

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00754

Abstract

Background: Restoring sleep is associated with favorable cognitive, emotional, and behavioral adaptations. As regards the association between sleep duration and facial emotion recognition (FER), results are conflicting, and as regards the association between symptoms of insomnia and FER, no study has been performed so far. Accordingly, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether subjective sleep was associated with FER, along with perceived stress and mental toughness.Method: A total of 201 police officers (mean age = 38.5 years, 64.2% males) took part in the present cross-sectional study. They completed questionnaires covering socio-demographic data, subjective symptoms of insomnia, perceived stress, and mental toughness. Further, they underwent a computerized FER test, consisting of facial emotion labeling and facial emotion matching.Results: Performance of FER (accuracy, speed) was unrelated to subjective symptoms of insomnia. Lower FER was associated with higher age, but not to perceived stress or mental toughness. No gender differences were observed. Higher symptoms of insomnia were associated with higher stress scores and lower scores of mental toughness.Conclusions: The pattern of results suggests that FER was not associated with symptoms of insomnia, understood as a proxy of sleep quality, among adults. This observation replicates those studies showing a zero-association between sleep and FER.

Highlights

The human brain has evolved and grown to its current dimensions and structure to cope with complex social environments [1, 2]
The key findings of the present study are that among a larger and broad sample of adults, performance on facial emotion recognition (FER) was unrelated to subjective symptoms of insomnia
No systematic gender differences appeared in FER, subjective symptoms of insomnia, perceived stress, and mental toughness

Summary

Introduction

The human brain has evolved and grown to its current dimensions and structure to cope with complex social environments [1, 2]. Throughout history, individuals often had to identify possible fair-weather friends (“friends” who stay committed as long as we do not need real help and who abandon us when we are most in need of support), cheaters (individuals breaking rules of social contracts), free-riders (individuals benefiting from the group’s performance without incurring personal costs), and defectors (individuals who benefit from the group’s performance, but leave the group as soon as they should increase their personal costs) Not surprisingly, organisms such as mammals need time to acquire knowledge on social complexity and to learn how to cope with social challenges; adolescence constitutes a relatively long period in human mankind, lasting much longer compared to all other mammals and animals [4]. Damage to these areas leads to prosopagnosia, a specific neurocognitive impairment in perceiving and understanding human faces and their underlying emotional processes [10,11,12] This is problematic, as the Social Contract Theory [3] claims, among other things, that identifying and remembering faces of individuals breaking social rules is crucial for coping with cheaters, free-riders, or defectors. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether subjective sleep was associated with FER, along with perceived stress and mental toughness

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion