Sleep duration and cognition: is there an ideal amount?

[摘要] The link between sleep and cognition has been well established in laboratory studies. In brief, when sleep is shortened or disrupted, cognitive performance on a range of tasks suffers. For instance, total sleep deprivation leads to poorer short-term memory, attention, and processing speed, as shown by a recent meta-analysis [1]. Similarly, several nights of experimentally induced chronic sleep restriction (e.g. 5 hours of sleep per night) can affect vigilance as severely as a single night of total sleep deprivation [2, 3]. By the same token, extending sleep past habitual levels, which is achieved by allowing individuals to sleep more than usual, improves cognition relative to baseline [4–6]. Taken together, these results suggest there is a linear relationship between sleep and cognitive functioning: more sleep leads to better cognitive performance, and vice versa.

[学科分类] 生理学