Dataset Information

Effects of Brief Behavioral Treatment for Insomnia on Daily Associations between Self-Reported Sleep and Objective Cognitive Performance in Older Adults.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Behavioral treatments for insomnia improve sleep in older adults, but research documenting their effects on cognitive performance is mixed. We explored whether a brief behavioral treatment for insomnia (BBTi) impacts daily associations between sleep parameters and next day cognition.

Methods

Sixty-two older adults (M_age = 69.45 years, SD = 7.71) with insomnia completed either 4 weeks of BBTi or self-monitoring control (SMC). At baseline, post-treatment, and 3 month follow-up, participants completed 14 days of diaries measuring sleep onset latency (SOL), wake after sleep onset (WASO), total sleep time (TST), and sleep efficiency (SE), as well as daily cognitive tests measuring processing speed (i.e., symbol digit modalities test, SDMT), and reasoning (i.e., letter series). At each time period, associations between sleep parameters and daily cognition, controlling for age, education, insomnia duration, use of sleep medications, and depression (i.e., Beck Depression Inventory-2^nd Edition scores), were examined through multilevel modeling.

Results

At post-treatment, we observed an interactive fixed effect of treatment condition (i.e., BBTi/SMC) and TST on daily SDMT and letter series performance. For BBTi, longer TST was associated with better letter series performance, and did not predict SDMT performance. For SMC, longer TST was associated with worse SDMT, and was not associated with letter series performance. Greater WASO (regardless of group) was associated with better SDMT performance at post-treatment. Associations were not maintained at follow-up.

Conclusions

Sleep duration may play an important role in BBTi-related improvements in daily higher order cognition. Maintenance of these associations may be facilitated by booster sessions following post-treatment.

Clinical trial identifier

NCT02967185.

SUBMITTER: McCrae CS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7981847 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Study objectivesThis study examined whether individuals with insomnia and objective short sleep duration <6 h, a subgroup with greater risks of adverse health outcomes, differ in their response to cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) when compared to individuals with insomnia and normal sleep duration ?6 h.MethodsSecondary analyses of a randomized, clinical trial with 60 adult participants (n = 31 women) from a single academic medical center. Outpatient treatment lasted 8 weeks, with a final follow-up conducted at 6 months. Mixed-effects models controlling for age, sex, CBT-I treatment group assignment, and treatment provider examined sleep parameters gathered via actigraphy, sleep diaries, and an Insomnia Symptom Questionnaire (ISQ) across the treatment and follow-up period.ResultsSix months post-CBT-I treatment, individuals with insomnia and normal sleep duration ?6 h fared significantly better on clinical improvement milestones than did those with insomnia and short sleep duration <6 h. Specifically, individuals with insomnia and normal sleep duration had significantly higher insomnia remission (ISQ < 36.5; ?2[1, N = 60] = 44.72, p < .0001), more normative sleep efficiency (SE) on actigraphy (SE > 80%; ?2[1, N = 60] = 21, p < .0001), normal levels of middle of the night wake after sleep onset (MWASO) <31 minutes (?2[1, N = 60] = 37.85, p < .0001), and a >50% decline in MWASO (?2[1, N = 60] = 60, p < .0001) compared to individuals with insomnia and short sleep duration. Additionally, those with insomnia and normal sleep duration had more success decreasing their total wake time (TWT) at the 6-month follow-up compared to those with insomnia and short sleep duration (?2[2, N = 60] = 44.1, p < .0001). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis found that using a 6-h cutoff with actigraphy provided a 95.7% sensitivity and 91.9% specificity for determining insomnia remission, with the area under the curve = 0.986.ConclusionsFindings suggest that individuals with insomnia and objective short sleep duration <6 h are significantly less responsive to CBT-I than those with insomnia and normal sleep duration ?6 h. Using an actigraphy TST cutoff of 6 hours to classify sleep duration groups was highly accurate and provided good discriminant value for determining insomnia remission.