Understanding the Need for Sleep to Improve Cognition.
Ruth L F Leong1, Michael W L Chee1
1Centre for Sleep and Cognition, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore; email: michael.chee@nus.edu.sg, ruthleong@nus.edu.sg.
Annual Review of Psychology
|August 12, 2022
Summary
Understanding individual sleep needs is crucial. Personalized sleep recommendations, considering genetics and lifestyle, can improve sleep quality and overall health, moving beyond generic duration guidelines.
Area of Science:
- Sleep Science
- Chronobiology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Sleep quality is determined by duration, timing, continuity, subjective quality, and efficiency.
- Current sleep guidelines focus solely on duration and rely on often inaccurate self-reports.
- Individual sleep needs are influenced by heritable traits, age, societal factors, and lifestyle.
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the limitations of current generic sleep recommendations.
- To emphasize the importance of personalized sleep prescriptions.
- To advocate for the integration of objective data for improved sleep strategies.
Main Methods:
- Review of existing literature on sleep function, heritability, and influencing factors.
- Analysis of the impact of sleep restriction on cognitive and physiological measures.
- Discussion of potential interventions for sleep quality enhancement.
Main Results:
- Sleep duration, timing, and deprivation tolerance are heritable and age-dependent.
- Societal factors significantly impact sleep opportunity and quality.
- Sleep restriction negatively affects behavior, brain function, and cognition.
Conclusions:
- Bespoke sleep recommendations are needed, moving beyond simple duration.
- Integrating objective sleep data with behavioral and self-reported information is essential.
- Further research should focus on large-scale, longitudinal studies for personalized sleep strategies.
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