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Summary: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic is a global health crisis with the potential to elicit and worsen psychiatric symptoms, particularly post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Identifying modifiable protective factors is critical for preventing and treating PTSD symptoms both during and following the COVID‐19 pandemic. The present study examined associations of self‐reported sleep quality and anticipatory threat appraisals of the pandemic with PTSD symptoms 6 months later in a sample enriched for pre‐pandemic trauma exposure and PTSD. The sample included 590 adults (mean age 38.2 years) who completed a baseline survey in August/September 2020 and follow‐up survey in March/April 2021. The sample was recruited from a pool of participants interested in a prior study about traumatic stress. Participants self‐reported sleep quality and pandemic‐related anticipatory threat appraisals at baseline. PTSD symptoms were assessed at baseline and follow‐up. Baseline sleep quality was associated with PTSD symptoms at follow‐up controlling for baseline PTSD symptoms (B = −2.49, p = 0.001). Perceived anticipatory threat of the pandemic moderated this association such that worse sleep quality was related to more severe PTSD symptoms at follow‐up for participants with higher (B = −4.07, p < 0.001) but not lower (B = −0.43, p = 0.679) anticipatory threat about the COVID‐19 pandemic. These findings suggest that poor sleep quality may enhance vulnerability to later PTSD symptoms during the pandemic, particularly among those individuals who perceived the pandemic as threatening for their future. Treatments that address sleep problems may be beneficial for reducing trauma‐related symptoms during and following the global health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Research elucidating the effects of sleep and circadian rhythm on cognitive performance is advancing, yet many important questions remain. Using flanker‐task performance scores from a large internet sample (N = 48,881) with repeated measures of cognitive performance and linked prior‐night self‐reported sleep duration, we analysed the relationship between sleep duration, time of day of task performance, and chronotype synchrony with performance in participants aged 15–80 years. Results indicate a performance peak at 7 hr habitual sleep duration, and point to a variable effect of deviation from habitual sleep duration depending on users' habitual sleep duration and age. Time‐of‐day effects were notable for a steady decline in performance up until 01:00 hours–02:00 hours for the group as a whole, which was accounted for by nighttime deterioration on trials requiring inhibitory executive functioning, particularly in older subjects. Analyses did not demonstrate an advantage for playing in synchrony with self‐identified chronotype. Results strengthen findings indicating an inverted U‐shaped relationship between sleep duration and cognitive performance across a broad spectrum of age groups. These findings underscore the importance of daytime task performance for tasks requiring inhibitory function, especially in elderly people. Findings highlight the utility of large‐scale internet data in contributing to sleep and circadian science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep disturbances are prevalent in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and are associated with a number of adverse health consequences. Few studies have used comprehensive assessment methods to characterize sleep in Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) veterans with PTSD. OEF/OIF/OND veterans with PTSD and sleep disturbance ( n = 45) were compared to patients with primary insomnia ( n = 25) and healthy control subjects ( n = 27). Participants were assessed using questionnaire-based measures as well as daily subjective and objective measures of sleep. The 3 groups were compared with regard to (a) group means, (b) intraindividual (i.e., night-to-night) variability of sleep, and (c) interindividual (i.e., within-group) variability of sleep. In terms of group means, only objective sleep efficiency was significantly worse with PTSD than with primary insomnia ( d = 0.54). Those with PTSD differed from those with primary insomnia on measures of intraindividual as well as interindividual variability ( d = 0.48-0.73). These results suggested sleep symptoms in OEF/OIF/OND veterans with PTSD are more variable across nights and less consistent across patients relative to sleep symptoms in insomnia patients without PTSD. These findings have implications for research, as well as for personalizing treatment for individuals with PTSD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]