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Individual Differences in Stages 3 and 4 Sleep
Author(s) -
Bliwise Donald L.,
Bergmann Bernard M.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1987.tb01857.x
Subject(s) - psychology , sleep (system call) , homogeneous , stage (stratigraphy) , audiology , developmental psychology , sleep stages , polysomnography , psychiatry , electroencephalography , medicine , paleontology , physics , biology , computer science , thermodynamics , operating system
Individual differences in stages 3 and 4 sleep are usually unrecognized., although several reports have mentioned large inter‐individual variation of the stages within a restricted age range. This study investigated individual differences and nightly reliability in stages 3 and 4 sleep in a homogeneous sample of 34 young adult males. Sleep was analyzed from the final two of three consecutive lab nights. Results indicated that stage 4 steep was an exceedingly prominent individual difference. Stage 4 occupied 7.9 to 50.0 percent of the first 3 hrs after sleep onset and was highly reliable across nights (.78). Individual differences were less pronounced in the second 3 hrs after sleep onset. Stage 3 and stage 4 were reliably distinguished. Persons high in one of these stages had relatively little of the other. Combining stage 3 and stage 4 may be a reasonable strategy if visually scored delta activity per se is of interest, bat it may obscure potentially meaningful individual differences in which state is characteristically achieved.