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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Sleep Sci 2022; 15(01): 17-25
DOI: 10.5935/1984-0063.20210022
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Sex differences in the cognitive performance in adults: role of impaired sleep

Luciane de Souza Medeiros 
1   Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde - Maceió - AL - Brazil.
,
Flavia H. Santos
2   University College Dublin, UCD School of Psychology, D04 V1W8 - Dublin - Ireland.
,
Alana Peixoto Almeida
3   Universidade Integrada Tiradentes, Psicologia - Maceió - AL- Brazil.
,
Davyd M.O. Alves
1   Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde - Maceió - AL - Brazil.
,
Renan Remaeh Rocca
1   Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde - Maceió - AL - Brazil.
,
Sergio Tufik
4   Universidade Federal De São Paulo, Psicobiologia - São Paulo - SP - Brazil.
,
Adriana Ximenes-da-Silva
1   Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde - Maceió - AL - Brazil.
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ABSTRACT

Objectives: Poor sleep quality negatively affects cognitive performance. However, there are limited data on sex differences in functional outcomes of impaired sleep on cognition. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the association between sleep quality and performance of men and women in cognitive tests.

Material and Methods: After screening, 97 individuals with and without insomnia complaints participated of this study. Behavioral scales were evaluated using a number of instruments and the sleep pattern was recorded by actigraph. Subsequently, the participants were submitted to visuospatial/verbal working memory (WM), visual attention, and psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT).

Results: The actigraphic recordings indicated that men sleep later (d=-0.56, p<0.05), fall asleep faster (d=0.42, p<0.05), showed shorter sleep duration (d=0.53, p<0.05), and more sleep fragmentation than women (d=-0.41, p<0.05). The performance in the cognitive tasks also showed sex differences: the men showed better performance in the visuospatial short-term memory (d=-0.78, p<0.05); verbal (d=-0.61, p<0.05), and visuospatial-WM tests (d=-0.84, p<0.05); they also responded faster in the PVT (d=0.69, p<0.05), although made more mistakes (d=-0.85, p<0.01). Longer sleep latency was associated with poor performance in visual attention (r=0.52, p<0.05) and verbal memory tasks (r=-0.30, p<0.05) in men.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that difficulty in falling asleep was associated with cognitive impairment, especially in men. Sex differences in sleep quality and cognitive skills should be taken into account in future research in this field.

Keywords:

Sex Differences - Working Memory - Attention - Sleep


Publication History

Article published online:
01 December 2023

© 2022. Brazilian Sleep Association. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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