CAREER: Longitudinal study of the effects of baseline sleep on emotional regulation in the context of real-life stressors

我们如何处理压力和处理压力经历会影响我们日常生活的许多方面。越来越多的证据表明，睡眠，特别是我们做梦时的睡眠阶段，即所谓的快速眼动睡眠，在处理压力方面发挥着重要作用。实验室研究表明，快速眼动睡眠在某些实验室条件下可以缓解压力，而在其他条件下则会增加压力。然而，人们对习惯性睡眠如何影响未来的压力反应知之甚少，尤其是在现实生活中。此外，众所周知，压力会影响睡眠质量，可能会造成一种恶性循环，即压力会干扰睡眠，从而阻碍压力的处理。这个项目研究急救者，试图更好地理解快速眼动睡眠、压力事件以及人们在压力下如何处理和表现之间的关系。在这个项目中，关于睡眠和压力之间关系的关键问题通过一项纵向研究来解决，该研究使用移动睡眠监测设备来测量来自大脑的脑电信号。消防员和护理人员的生理睡眠测量在他们暴露在高度紧张的现实生活事件之前的多个晚上被收集，作为他们日常实地工作的一部分，以及一年后。此外，还收集了今年几个时间点的各种行为和生理压力指标。这些包括创伤后应激症状，相关区域的大脑活动，如杏仁核和前额叶皮质在情绪参与任务中的活动，以及其他可能调节影响的人口统计学和个性特征。研究人员的目标是澄清习惯性睡眠，特别是快速眼动睡眠，是否可以预测在这种现实生活场景中对压力的脆弱性，这种关系可能涉及哪些大脑区域，以及哪些因素决定快速眼动睡眠增加或减少这种脆弱性。该项目还旨在通过向公众提供一系列讲座来支持提高睡眠和认知神经科学的可见度和获得机会，为科学中代表性不足的群体中有前途的学生组织研讨会，以及有机会加入实验室，体验睡眠研究的实践经验。总体而言，该项目试图将睡眠和压力研究从实验室带入现实世界，从而弥合文献中的空白，并可能建立协议来帮助未来的应急人员对压力事件变得不那么敏感。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

How we handle stress and process stressful experiences affects many aspects of our daily lives. A growing body of evidence suggests that sleep, particularly the sleep stage when we dream known as Rapid-Eye Movement (REM) sleep, plays a significant role in the processing of stress. In lab studies, REM sleep has been shown to alleviate stress under certain laboratory conditions and increase it in others. However, not enough is known about the way habitual, day-to-day sleep influences future stress responses, especially in real-life situations. Moreover, stress is known to affect the quality of sleep, potentially creating a vicious cycle where stress interrupts sleep which hinders the processing of stress. This project studies first responders to attempt to better understand the relationship between REM sleep, stressful events, and how well people cope with and perform under stress. In this project, critical questions about the relationship between sleep and stress are addressed through a longitudinal study, using mobile sleep monitoring devices that measure EEG signals from the brain. Physiological sleep measures from firefighters and paramedics are collected for multiple nights prior to their exposure to highly stressful real-life events as part of their routine fieldwork, as well as a year later. In addition, various behavioral and physiological measures of stress are collected on several time points during this year. These include post-traumatic stress symptoms, brain activity from relevant regions such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex during an emotionally engaging task, and other demographic and personality traits that may modulate the effects. The researcher aims to clarify whether habitual sleep, particularly REM sleep, can predict vulnerability to stress in such real-life scenarios, what brain areas may be involved in this relationship, and what factors determine if REM sleep increases or decreases such vulnerability. The project also aims to support advancing the visibility and access to the neuroscience of sleep and cognition through a series of talks made available for the public, organizing workshops for promising student from underrepresented groups in science, and an opportunity to join the lab for hands-on experience in sleep research. Overall, this project attempts to bring sleep and stress research from the lab to the real world, thus bridging gaps in the literature and potentially establishing protocols to help future emergency responders to become less sensitive to stressful events.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.