IJERPH, Vol. 17, Pages 6113: Sleep and Prospective Memory: A Retrospective Study in Different Clinical Populations

We examined a total of 3600 nights, recorded using actigraphy in participants belonging to the following groups: primary insomnia (731 nights); narcolepsy type 1 (1069 nights); attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (152 nights in children and 239 in adults); severe obesity (232 nights); essential hypertension (226 nights); menopause (143 nights); healthy controls (808 nights). In a naturalistic activity-based PM task, each participant originally wore an actigraph around the non-dominant wrist and was requested to push the event-marker button at two specific times of day: bedtime (activity 1) and get-up time (activity 2). Each clinical group showed significantly lower sleep quality in comparison to the control group. However, only narcolepsy type 1 patients presented a significantly impaired PM performance at get-up time, remembering to push the event-marker button around half the time compared not only to healthy controls but also to the other clinical groups. Overall, the present results seem to point to sleep quality having no effect on the efficiency of a naturalistic activity-based PM task. Moreover, the data indicated that narcolepsy type 1 patients may show a disease-specific cognitive deficit of PM.
Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research