The Relation Between Daytime Sleep and Cognitive Functioning in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) Subjects
Abstract
The current thesis aimed to investigate the relationship between daytime sleep and cognitive functioning in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) subjects and healthy older adults. To explore this, 20 MCI subjects and 16 healthy older adults completed two lab visits with subjective reports, daytime sleep Polysomnography (PSG) measures and a battery of neuropsychological measures. I formulated three main research questions (a) How do MCI subjects and healthy older adults differ in subjective sleep quality? (b) How do MCI subjects and healthy older adults differ in objective daytime sleep parameters? (c) How do MCI subjects and healthy older adults differ in post-nap cognitive changes and how do those changes relate to PSG parameters? Results showed that (a) although self-reported sleep disturbance did not differ in MCI subjects and healthy older adults, within the entire sample, there were some notable correlations between subjective sleep disturbance and cognitive performance; (b) PSG measures suggested that MCI subjects expressed significant less slow-wave sleep (SWS) than healthy older adults and PSG parameters such as the relative amount of stage 2 sleep and SWS were associated with cognitive performance; (c) both MCI subjects and healthy older adults had significant post-nap cognitive improvements and such improvements were associated with PSG parameters such as the amount of stage 2 sleep and kcomplex. These findings might be important steps toward a better understanding of daytime sleep activities in MCI subjects and a better identification of PSG parameters and potential mechanisms, which would contribute to future intervention studies and treatment programs.
Citation
Jia, Yajun (2020). The Relation Between Daytime Sleep and Cognitive Functioning in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) Subjects. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /192952.