1 research outputs found
Objective and Subjective Components of the First-Night Effect in Young Nightmare Sufferers and Healthy Participants
The first-night effect—marked differences between the first- and the second-night sleep spent in a
laboratory—is a widely known phenomenon that accounts for the common practice of excluding
the first-night sleep from any polysomnographic analysis. The extent to which the first-night effect
is present in a participant, as well as its duration (1 or more nights), might have diagnostic value
and should account for different protocols used for distinct patient groups. This study investigated
the first-night effect on nightmare sufferers (NM; N D 12) and healthy controls .N D 15/ using
both objective (2-night-long polysomnography) and subjective (Groningen Sleep Quality Scale
for the 2 nights spent in the laboratory and 1 regular night spent at home) methods. Differences
were found in both the objective (sleep efficiency, wakefulness after sleep onset, sleep latency,
Stage-1 duration, Stage-2 duration, slow-wave sleep duration, and REM duration) and subjective
(self-rating) variables between the 2 nights and the 2 groups, with a more pronounced first-night
effect in the case of the NM group. Furthermore, subjective sleep quality was strongly related to
polysomnographic variables and did not differ among 1 regular night spent at home and the second
night spent in the laboratory. The importance of these results is discussed from a diagnostic point
of view