Attentional bias towards sleep‐related stimuli in insomnia disorder: a behavioural and ERP study. (10th January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhou, Ningning; Zhao, Chuanwen; Yang, Ting; Du, Sha; Yu, Meng; Shen, Heyong
• Is Part Of: Journal of sleep research. Volume 27:Number 3(2018)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2018-01-10
• Subjects: electrophysiology -- sleep disorder -- Stroop color word task; Sleep -- Periodicals; Sleep disorders -- Periodicals; 612.821
• DOI: 10.1111/jsr.12652
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0962-1105

Abstract

Summary: Many studies have used behavioural experiments to show an attentional bias towards sleep‐related stimuli in people with insomnia disorder. A measurement of event‐related potential is needed to investigate the cognitive processing mechanism of the attentional process. The present study used the emotional Stroop paradigm and event‐related potentials to measure attentional bias towards sleep‐negative, sleep‐positive and sleep‐unrelated neutral words. The study comprised 16 participants with insomnia disorder and 15 participants who were good sleepers. Behavioural data indicated that there was a significant interference effect of sleep‐positive words between the insomnia group and the good sleepers, and a marginally significant interference effect from sleep‐negative words between groups. In the insomnia group, event‐related potential data showed that sleep‐negative words elicited higher amplitudes of P1 and N1 components than did sleep‐positive and sleep‐unrelated words. Our results provide evidence for the early cognitive processing of sleep‐negative stimuli, which suggests that the psychological treatment of insomnia could benefit from addressing early hypervigilance towards these stimuli.