Experiencing heightened arousing, traumatic events can lead to a constellation of detrimental effects, including sleep disturbances (e.g. insomnia; Spoormaker & Montgomery, 2008), recurrent intrusive memories (Iyadurai et al., 2019) and impaired memories of traumatic experiences (e.g. loss of details; Jones et al., 2007). These symptoms constitute core features of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In particular, the co-occurrences of sleep disruption and maladaptive memory/emotion processing raise an intriguing question on whether sleep interventions in the early aftermath of trauma could potentially change the trajectory of post-traumatic symptomatology (Spoormaker & Montgomery, 2008).Sleep disturbances are common among trauma survivors, with the prevalence rates up to 80%-90% (Koffel et al., 2016). Disrupted sleep could be an adaptive consequence of traumatic experiences that prevents traumatic memories from being consolidated. Indeed, mounting evidences suggest sleep preferentially consolidates emotional memories and makes them long-lasting (Cox et al., 2018;Hu et al., 2006;Wagner et al., 2001). Besides memories, a few studies suggested sleep may also preserve affective tones of emotional
Sleep disturbances are common in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although which sleep microarchitectural characteristics reliably classify those with and without PTSD remains equivocal. Here, we investigated sleep microarchitectural differences (i.e., spectral power, spindle activity) in trauma-exposed individuals that met (n = 45) or did not meet (n = 52) criteria for PTSD and how these differences relate to post-traumatic and related psychopathological symptoms. Using ecologically-relevant home sleep polysomnography recordings, we show that individuals with PTSD exhibit decreased beta spectral power during NREM sleep and increased fast sleep spindle peak frequencies. Contrary to prior reports, spectral power in the beta frequency range (20.31–29.88 Hz) was associated with reduced PTSD symptoms, reduced depression, anxiety and stress and greater subjective ability to regulate emotions. Increased fast frequency spindle activity was not associated with individual differences in psychopathology. Our findings may suggest an adaptive role for beta power during sleep in individuals exposed to a trauma, potentially conferring resilience. Further, we add to a growing body of evidence that spindle activity may be an important biomarker for studying PTSD pathophysiology.
Study Objectives Sleep plays a pivotal role in the off-line processing of emotional memory. However, much remains unknown for its immediate vs. long-term influences. We employed behavioral and electrophysiological measures to investigate the short- and long-term impacts of sleep vs. sleep deprivation on emotional memory. Methods Fifty-nine participants incidentally learned 60 negative and 60 neutral pictures in the evening and were randomly assigned to either sleep or sleep deprivation conditions. We measured memory recognition and subjective affective ratings in 12- and 60-hour post-encoding tests, with EEGs in the delayed test. Results In a 12-hour post-encoding test, compared to sleep deprivation, sleep equally preserved both negative and neutral memory, and their affective tones. In the 60-hour post-encoding test, negative and neutral memories declined significantly in the sleep group, with attenuated emotional responses to negative memories over time. Furthermore, two groups showed spatial-temporally distinguishable ERPs at delayed test: while both groups showed the old-new frontal negativity (300-500 ms, FN400), sleep-deprived participants additionally showed an old-new parietal, Late Positive Component effect (600-1000 ms, LPC). Multivariate whole-brain ERPs analyses further suggested that sleep prioritized neural representation of emotion over memory processing, while they were less distinguishable in the sleep deprivation group. Conclusions These data suggested that sleep's impact on emotional memory and affective responses is time-dependent: sleep preserved memories and affective tones in the short term, while ameliorating affective tones in the long term. Univariate and multivariate EEG analyses revealed different neurocognitive processing of remote, emotional memories between sleep and sleep deprivation groups.
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