Research Brings New Insights Into How We Sleep

Sleep plays a critical role in our health, from the amount of rest we have on a given day to its affect on how the body ages. Scientists are learning more and more about the science of sleep — no, not the Michel Gondry film of the same name — and how we can get the most out of it. But a new paper published earlier this month offers another perspective on sleep: namely, the array of different ways that people can sleep, and what that means for our health.

The paper was published in the journal PLOS Biology, and explores what the authors describe as five “sleep-biopsychosocial profiles that simultaneously relate self-reported sleep patterns to biopsychosocial factors of health, cognition, and lifestyle.”

The first of these made explicit the connection between poor sleep and troubled mental health. The scientists identified one group that took longer to fall asleep and had less rewarding sleep; the people in this group also experienced “depression, anxiety, somatic complaints and internalizing behavior” along with “fear, anger and stress.” A second group experienced similar psychological issues, but featured a higher level of sleep resilience.

As for the third group the scientists identified, this one ”was mostly characterized by sleep aids intake,” which was reflected in issues with both memory and “emotional recognition.” Researchers found that the fourth group was characterized by relatively short amounts of sleep and “higher aggressive behavior and lower agreeableness” as a result. A fifth group demonstrated a connection between sleep disturbances and “aggressive behavior and worse cognitive performance.”

Treatment for Epilepsy Expands Scientists’ Understanding of Sleep

It could also address larger questions of how consciousness works

These findings do have one significant caveat: as the paper’s authors point out, the quality of sleep and psychological results were “mostly self-reported through questionnaires.” Questions remain over how accurate this more objective approach is, and it’s something to consider while looking through these findings. Still, these findings do respresent a significant step forward, with Dr. Henry Yaggi of the Yale Centers for Sleep Medicine telling Live Science that the findings represented “a much more comprehensive assessment of sleep than I think we’ve had in the past.”

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…