Abstract
IntroductionRecently it has been shown that acute sleep loss has a direct impact on emotional processing in healthy individuals. Here we studied the effect of chronically disturbed sleep on emotional processing by investigating two samples of patients with sleep disorders.Methods25 patients with psychophysiologic insomnia (23 women and 2 men, mean age: 51.6 SD; 10.9 years), 19 patients with sleep apnea syndrome (4 women and 15 men, mean age: 51.9; SD 11.1) and a control sample of 24 subjects with normal sleep (15women and 9 men, mean age 45.3; SD 8.8) completed a Facial Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL) task, requiring participants to categorize and rate the intensity of six emotional expression categories: anger, anxiety, fear, happiness, disgust and sadness. Differences in FEEL score and its subscales among the three samples were analysed using ANOVA with gender as a covariate.ResultsBoth patients with psychophysiologic insomnia and patients with sleep apnea showed significantly lower performance in the FEEL test as compared to the control group. Differences were seen in the scales happiness and sadness. Patient groups did not differ from each other.ConclusionBy demonstrating that previously known effects of acute sleep deprivation on emotional processing can be extended to persons experiencing chronically disturbed sleep, our data contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between sleep loss and emotions.
Highlights
It has been shown that acute sleep loss has a direct impact on emotional processing in healthy individuals
By demonstrating that previously known effects of acute sleep deprivation on emotional processing can be extended to persons experiencing chronically disturbed sleep, our data contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between sleep loss and emotions
In a recent pilot study Kyle et al [21] investigated emotional perception in insomnia patients compared to normal controls and found that insomnia patients rated facial expressions of sadness and fear as emotionally less intense. These findings suggest that alterations of emotional processing are present after acute sleep deprivation, and in patients with chronic insomnia
Summary
It has been shown that acute sleep loss has a direct impact on emotional processing in healthy individuals. We studied the effect of chronically disturbed sleep on emotional processing by investigating two samples of patients with sleep disorders. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information file.
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