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Abstract Emotional memory bias is a common characteristic of internalizing symptomatology and is enhanced during sleep. The current study employs bifactor S-1 modeling to disentangle depression-specific anhedonia, anxiety-specific anxious arousal, and the common internalizing factor, general distress, and test whether these internalizing symptoms interact with sleep to influence memory for emotional and neutral information. Healthy adults (N= 281) encoded scenes featuring either negative objects (e.g., a vicious looking snake) or neutral objects (e.g., a chipmunk) placed on neutral backgrounds (e.g., an outdoor scene). After a 12-hour period of daytime wakefulness (n= 140) or nocturnal sleep (n= 141), participants judged whether objects and backgrounds were the same, similar, or new compared with what they viewed during encoding. Participants also completed the mini version of the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire. Higher anxious arousal predicted worse memory across all stimuli features, but only after a day spent being awake—not following a night of sleep. No significant effects were found for general distress and anhedonia in either the sleep or wake condition. In this study, internalizing symptoms were not associated with enhanced emotional memory. Instead, memory performance specifically in individuals with higher anxious arousal was impaired overall, regardless of emotional valence, but this was only the case when the retention interval spanned wakefulness (i.e., not when it spanned sleep). This suggests that sleep may confer a protective effect on general memory impairments associated with anxiety.
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Habitual r apid eye movement sleep predicts changes in test‐anxiety levels weeks in advance
Summary Previous research has linked rapid eye movement sleep to emotional processing, particularly stress. Lab studies indicate that rapid eye movement sleep deprivation and fragmentation heighten emotional reactivity and stress response. This relationship extends to natural settings, where poor‐quality sleep among college students correlates with increased academic stress and lower academic performance. However, there is a lack of research into how specific sleep stages, like rapid eye movement, affect real‐life stress development. This study investigated whether habitual rapid eye movement sleep in college students can predict the future development of real‐life stress symptoms associated with final exams. Fifty‐two participants (mean age = 19 years, 62% females) monitored their sleep for a week during the academic semester using a mobile electroencephalogram device, and then completed self‐evaluations measuring test anxiety and other relevant factors. They completed the same evaluations again just prior to final exams. We found that rapid eye movement sleep was the most dominant factor predicting changes in participants' test anxiety. However, contrasting with our predictions, habitual rapid eye movement sleep was associated with an increase rather than decrease in anxiety. We discuss these results in terms of the rapid eye movement recalibration hypothesis, which suggests rapid eye movement sleep modulates activity in stress‐encoding areas in the brain, leading to both decreased sensitivity and increased selectivity of stress responses.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2237419
- PAR ID:
- 10528984
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Sleep Research
- ISSN:
- 0962-1105
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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