Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 106, March 2015, Pages 79-85
Biological Psychology

High cardiac vagal control is related to better subjective and objective sleep quality

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.02.004Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Cardiac vagal control (CVC) was measured during an extended standardized baseline.

  • Subjective and polysomnographic variables of sleep quality were assessed.

  • Higher CVC was found to be associated with better subjective and objective sleep quality.

Abstract

Cardiac vagal control (CVC) has been linked to both physical and mental health. One critical aspect of health, that has not received much attention, is sleep. We hypothesized that adults with higher CVC – operationalized by high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) – will exhibit better sleep quality assessed both subjectively (i.e., with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) and objectively (i.e., with polysomnography). HF-HRV was measured in 29 healthy young women during an extended neutral film clip. Participants then underwent full polysomnography to obtain objective measures of sleep quality and HF-HRV during a night of sleep. As expected, higher resting HF-HRV was associated with higher subjective and objective sleep quality (i.e., shorter sleep latency and fewer arousals). HF-HRV during sleep (overall or separated by sleep phases) showed less consistent relationships with sleep quality. These findings indicate that high waking CVC may be a key predictor of healthy sleep.

Keywords

Parasympathetic nervous system
Heart rate variability
Respiratory sinus arrhythmia
Sleep quality
Polysomnography

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