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Sleep after stress induction: the role of stressful memory reactivation
Author(s) -
Bader Klaus,
Bauer Catherine,
Christen Regula,
Schäfer Valérie
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
stress and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1532-2998
pISSN - 1532-3005
DOI - 10.1002/smi.1348
Subject(s) - bedtime , psychology , sleep (system call) , stressor , stress (linguistics) , vulnerability (computing) , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , audiology , psychiatry , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , computer security , computer science , operating system
Exposure to extreme stress is known to have immediate as well as long‐term effects on sleep. There is some evidence that adverse childhood experiences as well can increase the vulnerability of sleep to stress in the long term. In order to validate these assumptions, 39 healthy female undergraduate students were exposed to a video stress induction procedure before bedtime. Self‐reports and actigraphic measures were collected through a period of three baseline nights and the test night. Participants' self‐reports of the subsequent night's sleep were significantly associated with the degree to which they reported that the stress inducing film had triggered own stressful memories of their past. This finding supports the assumption that early stress history can increase an individual's vulnerability of sleep to stress, in particularly when actual stressors lead to the reactivation of stressful memories. Yet, actigraphic measures did not corroborate this subjective impression of sleep impairment. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.