Although daytime emotional stressful events are often presumed to cause sleep disturbances, the few studies of stressful life events on sleep physiology have resulted in various and contradictory findings. As research has focused in particular on stress in itself, the present study is the first to investigate the effect using polysomnography (PSG). Results indicate a significant increase in sleep fragmentation, as expressed by decreased sleep efficiency, total sleep time, percentage of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and an increased wake after sleep onset latency, total time awake, latency to SWS, number of awakenings and number of awakenings from REM sleep. The results demonstrate that negative emotion correlates with enhanced sleep fragmentation helping us to understand why sleep patterns change and how sleep disturbances may develop.

Copyright © 2011 Society for Psychophysiological Research.