Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Mar 5:16:233-245.
doi: 10.2147/NSS.S441509. eCollection 2024.

Associations Between Repetitive Negative Thinking and Objective and Subjective Sleep Health in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults

Lydia B Munns #  1   2 , Harriet Demnitz-King #  1 , Claire André  3 , Stéphane Rehel  3 , Valentin Ourry  3 , Vincent de La Sayette  4 , Denis Vivien  3   5 , Gaël Chételat  3 , Géraldine Rauchs #  3 , Natalie L Marchant #  1 ; Medit-Ageing Research Group
Affiliations

Associations Between Repetitive Negative Thinking and Objective and Subjective Sleep Health in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults

Lydia B Munns et al. Nat Sci Sleep. .

Abstract

Objective: Poor sleep and high levels of repetitive negative thinking (RNT), including future-directed (ie, worry) and past-directed (ie, brooding) negative thoughts, have been associated with markers of dementia risk. The relationship between RNT and sleep health in older adults is unknown. This study aimed to investigate this association and its specificities including multiple dimensions of objective and subjective sleep.

Methods: This study used a cross sectional quantitative design with baseline data from 127 cognitively healthy older adults (mean age 69.4 ± 3.8 years; 63% female) who took part in the Age-Well clinical trial, France. RNT (ie, worry and brooding) levels were measured using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Rumination Response Scale (brooding subscale). Polysomnography was used to assess sleep objectively, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and the St. Mary's Hospital Sleep Questionnaire were used to measure sleep subjectively. In primary analyses the associations between RNT and sleep (ie, objective sleep duration, fragmentation and efficiency and subjective sleep disturbance) were assessed via adjusted regressions.

Results: Higher levels of RNT were associated with poorer objective sleep efficiency (worry: β=-0.32, p<0.001; brooding: β=-0.26, p=0.002), but not objective sleep duration, fragmentation, or subjective sleep disturbance. Additional analyses, however, revealed differences in levels of worry between those with short, compared with typical and long objective sleep durations (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: In cognitively healthy older adults, RNT was associated with sleep characteristics that have been implicated in increased dementia risk. It will take additional research to ascertain the causal link between RNT and sleep characteristics and how they ultimately relate to the risk of developing dementia.

Keywords: ageing; anxiety; perseverative cognition; rumination; sleep.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

N.L. Marchant and G. Chételat report a grant from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant 667696). N.L. Marchant was supported by a Senior Fellowship from the Alzheimer’s Society (AS-SF-15b-002). The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Associations between RNT and categorical sleep duration: short, typical, and long. (A) Worry and sleep duration, and (B) brooding and sleep duration. Mean and standard deviations shown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Kent BA, Feldman HH, Nygaard HB. Sleep and its regulation: an emerging pathogenic and treatment frontier in Alzheimer’s disease. Prog Neurobiol. 2021;197:101902. doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2020.101902 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Yaffe K, Falvey CM, Hoang T. Connections between sleep and cognition in older adults. Lancet Neurol. 2014;13(10):1017–1028. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(14)70172-3 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Maglione JE, Ancoli-Israel S, Peters KW, et al. Depressive Symptoms and Subjective and Objective Sleep in Community-Dwelling Older Women. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2012;60(4):635–643. doi:10.1111/j.1532-5415.2012.03908.x - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kline CE. Polysomnography. In: Gellman MD editor. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer International Publishing; 2020:1700–1704. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39903-0_825 - DOI
    1. Wallace ML, Yu L, Buysse DJ, et al. Multidimensional sleep health domains in older men and women: an actigraphy factor analysis. Sleep. 2021;44(2):zsaa181. doi:10.1093/sleep/zsaa181 - DOI - PMC - PubMed