Sleep deprivation: Effect on sleep stages and EEG power density in man

A significant body of research has investigated the effects of physical activity on sleep, yet this research has not been systematically aggregated in over a decade. As a result, the magnitude and moderators of these effects are unclear. This meta-analytical review examines the effects of acute and regular exercise on sleep, incorporating a range of outcome and moderator variables. PubMed and PsycINFO were used to identify 66 studies for inclusion in the analysis that were published through May 2013. Analyses reveal that acute exercise has small beneficial effects on total sleep time, sleep onset latency, sleep efficiency, stage 1 sleep, and slow wave sleep, a moderate beneficial effect on wake time after sleep onset, and a small effect on rapid eye movement sleep. Regular exercise has small beneficial effects on total sleep time and sleep efficiency, small-to-medium beneficial effects on sleep onset latency, and moderate beneficial effects on sleep quality. Effects were moderated by sex, age, baseline physical activity level of participants, as well as exercise type, time of day, duration, and adherence. Significant moderation was not found for exercise intensity, aerobic/anaerobic classification, or publication date. Results were discussed with regards to future avenues of research and clinical application to the treatment of insomnia.

The effects of physical activity on sleep: a meta-analytic review

Physical fitness training and mental health.

Increasing depth of sleep corresponds to an increasing gain in the neuronal feedback loops that generate the low-frequency (slow-wave) electroencephalogram (EEG). The authors derived the maximum-likelihood estimator of the feedback gain and applied it to quantify sleep depth. The estimator computes the fraction (0%-100%) of the current slow wave which continues in the near future (0.02 s later) EEG. Therefore, this percentage was dubbed slow-wave microconfinuity (SW%). It is not affected by anatomical parameters such as skull thickness, which can considerably bias the commonly used slow-wave power (SWP). In the authors' study, both of the estimators SW% and SWP were monitored throughout two nights in 22 subjects. Each subject took temazepam (a benzodiazepine) on one of the two nights, Both estimators detected the effects of age, temazepam, and time of night on sleep. Females were found to have twice the SWP of males, but no gender effect on SW% was found. This confirms earlier reports that gender affects SWP but not sleep depth. Subjectively assessed differences in sleep quality between the nights were correlated to differences in SW%, not in SWP. These results demonstrate that slow-wave microcontinuity, being based on a physiological model of sleep, reflects sleep depth more closely than SWP does.

Analysis of a sleep-dependent neuronal feedback loop: the slow-wave microcontinuity of the EEG

Is Schizophrenia due to excessive synaptic pruning in the prefrontal cortex? The Feinberg hypothesis revisited

We tested the hypothesis that EEG sleep stages 3 and 4 (slow-wave sleep, SWS) would be increased as a function of either acute of chronic exercise. Ten distance runners were matched with 10 nonrunners, and their sleep was recorded under both habitual (runners running and nonrunners not running, 3 night) and abruptly changed (runners not running and nonrunners running, 1 night) conditions. Analyses of both visually scored SWS and computer measures of delta activity during non-rapid eye-movement (NREM) sleep failed to support the SWS-exercise hypothesis. The runners showed a significantly higher proportion and a greater absolute amount of NREM sleep than the nonrunners. The runners showed less rapid eye-movement activity during sleep than the nonrunners under both experimental conditions, indicating a strong and unexpected effect of physical fitness on this measure. Modest afternoon exercise in nonrunners was associated with a strong trend toward elevated heart rate during sleep. Mood tests and personality profiles revealed few differences, either between groups or within groups, as a function of exercise.

J. M. Walker

Papers

Effects of exercise on sleep

Period and amplitude analysis of 0.5–3c/sec activity in NREM sleep of young adults