Research published this month identified five sleeping patterns based on participants’ self-reported assessment of their sleep. Outside chats with the lead researcher and a sleep doctor to parse out what the study’s results mean for your overall health and performance. Since the first issue of the journal Sleep was published back in 1978, over 300,000 research studies have dug into the science of sleep. Many of these have been “single-association” studies, which connect a single element of sleep (i.e., nightly awakenings) with a single outcome (i.e., risk of cognitive decline). However, as we all know, sleep is complex and multifaceted. In a study published this month in PLOS Biology, a global team of researchers set out to explore these intricacies and connect different elements of sleep with various outcomes. Their findings could help reveal how your unique sleep patterns influence your mood, mindset, and both your mental and athletic performance throughout the day—the study refers to these patterns as “profiles.” This study, titled “Identification of Five Sleep-Biopsychosocial Profiles with Specific Neural Signatures Linking Sleep Variability with Health, Cognition, and Lifestyle Factors,” relied on information from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). The HCP collects a wide range of health data—including cognitive tests, brain scans, and self-reported sleep assessments—from thousands of participants. For this study, researchers analyzed data from 770 young, healthy adults to examine how certain aspects of their health and performance corresponded to different attributes of their sleep. Participants reflected on their past month of sleep via a questionnaire, and the resulting sleep data were used to inform the five profiles. After analyzing the comprehensive HCP dataset, Perrault and her team identified five sleep profiles, each associated with specific behaviors. Every sleep profile also correlated to a unique pattern of brain function, Perrault says, “suggesting that sleep experiences are reflected not just in health and behavior, but also in the brain’s wiring and activity.” This study focused on young, healthy, and primarily white adults between the ages of 22 and 36, so Perrault notes that research on more diverse populations is needed to validate the findings. Future studies should also analyze data collected over a person’s lifespan for a more complete health profile; this study was just a snapshot of one point in time.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!New Research Identifies Five Sleep Profiles And Examines How Each May Affect Health And Performance
