Sleep architecture and sleep-related mentation in securely and insecurely attached people

Abstract

Based on REM sleep's brain activation patterns and its participation in consolidation of emotional memories, we tested the hypothesis that measures of REM sleep architecture and REM sleeprelated mentation would be associated with attachment orientation. After a habituation night in a sleep lab, a convenience sample of 64 healthy volunteers were awakened 10 minutes into a REM sleep episode and 10 minutes into a control NREM sleep episode in counterbalanced order, then asked to report a dream and to rate themselves and a significant other on a list of trait adjectives. Relative to participants classified as having secure attachment orientations, participants classified as anxious took less time to enter REM sleep and had a higher frequency of REM dreams with aggression and self-denigrating themes. There were no significant differences across attachment groups in other measures of sleep architecture or in post REM-sleep awakening ratings on PANAS subscales reflecting mood and alertness. Selected aspects of REM sleep architecture and mentation appeared to be associated with attachment orientation. We suggest that REM sleep plays a role in processing experiences and emotions related to attachment, and that certain features of sleep and dreaming reflect attachment orientations. Keywords REM sleep; NREM sleep; REM latency; attachment status; dreams; moodThere is now abundant evidence that social relationships, particularly close emotional relationships, can significantly affect health status (Cacioppo et al., 2002; Uchino, HoltLunstad, Uno, Campo, & Reblin, 2007). The impact of social relationships on a wide variety of measures of health status has been studied via the theoretical concept known as "attachment." Bowlby (1969Bowlby ( , 1982 first introduced the concept of attachment, which he conceptualized in terms of a biobehavioral regulatory system that adjusts physical and emotional proximity between juveniles and caregivers. Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978) noted that several styles or patterns of attachment existed in a typical population of infants and children, with some children being securely attached to their mother and others * Corresponding Author. mcnamar@bu.edu. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptAttach Hum Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 March 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript being insecurely attached. Evidence was later presented (Hazan & Shaver, 1987) to suggest that similar attachment styles exist in adolescence and adulthood. This paper reports on how adult attachment styles may be seen to link up with sleep architecture and sleep-related mentation, but before stating the hypotheses underlying this report, a brief review of attachment prototypes, and the literature on emotional memory processing is provided. Attachment PrototypesAttachment researchers presented evidence that attachment styles in both adults and children are mediated by internal working models of the relation between self and significant others ("attachment ...

Relationships between adult attachment style ratings and sleep disturbances in a nationally representative sample

“…Given inconsistencies in the assessment of attachment, the current findings cannot be directly compared with those of previous studies utilizing self-reports of attachment anxiety and avoidance. Nonetheless, the current findings are clearly consistent with the majority of past studies that have found one or more forms of attachment insecurity to be associated with selfreports of sleep problems [24][25][26]28,29,32].…”

“…Three studies examined clinical populations, including women with recurrent major depression [30], military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and sleep disturbances [31], and breast cancer survivors [32]. In general, these studies found support for an association between attachment insecurity and poorer self-reported sleep quality [24][25][26]28,29,32]. Approximately equal numbers of studies have found attachment avoidance [24,26,28,29,32] and attachment anxiety [24][25][26]32] to be related to self-reported sleep problems, with three obtaining significant findings regarding both forms of insecurity [24,26,32].…”

“…To date, nine studies with adult samples have examined relationships between attachment variables and subjective reports of sleep impairments or disturbances. Of these, six utilized non-clinical samples, such as female health workers [24], university students [25], both members of romantic/cohabitating couples [26,27], and small community samples of healthy adults [28] and older adults [29]. Three studies examined clinical populations, including women with recurrent major depression [30], military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and sleep disturbances [31], and breast cancer survivors [32].…”

Sonolência diurna e habilidades sociais em estudantes de medicina

“…Dentre essas, a privação do sono é a mais comum entre adultos jovens, e as mudanças do O presente estudo demonstrou que a presença de sonolên-cia diurna em estudantes de Medicina está associada a menores escores gerais de habilidades sociais. Essa associação entre distúrbios do sono e habilidades emocionais tem sido apontada por outros estudos 31,32 . A presença de sonolência excessiva associa-se a maior dificuldade de leitura de ambiente, ou seja, menor capacidade de identificar as variáveis do ambiente para reagir de acordo com a situação.…”

Theory of Mind: Towards an Evolutionary Theory

“…Their mutual relationship is not fully clarified but a number of studies point to a coordinating, and hence primary, role of the hippocampal theta (Hasselmo 2005;Sirota et al 2008). 24 This initial proposal has now been corroborated in a number of studies (McNamara et al 2001;McNamara et al 2007;McNamara et al 2011). autistic children have a much smaller REM sleep percentage of total sleep time than healthy controls. Likewise, other sleep disorders common to autistic children also seem to be related to perturbations of REM sleep (Devnani and Hedge 2015).…”