Wearing an eye mask during overnight sleep improves episodic learning and alertness

Greco, Viviana, Bergamo, Damiana, Cuoccio, Paola, Konkoly, Karen R., Lombardo, Kike Munoz and Lewis, Penelope A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1793-3520 2023. Wearing an eye mask during overnight sleep improves episodic learning and alertness. Sleep 46 (3) , zsac305. 10.1093/sleep/zsac305

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Abstract

Ambient light can influence sleep structure and timing. We explored how wearing an eye-mask to block light during overnight sleep impacts on memory and alertness, changes that could benefit everyday tasks like studying or driving. In Experiment 1, ninety-four 18–35-year-olds wore an eye-mask while they slept every night for a week and underwent a control condition in which light was not blocked for another week. Five habituation nights were followed by a cognitive battery on the sixth and seventh days. This revealed superior episodic encoding and an improvement on alertness when using the mask. In Experiment 2, thirty-five 18–35-year-olds used a wearable device to monitor sleep with and without the mask. This replicated the encoding benefit and showed that it was predicted by time spent in slow wave sleep. Our findings suggest that wearing an eye-mask during overnight sleep can improve episodic encoding and alertness the next day.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC)
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0161-8105
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 December 2022
Date of Acceptance:	9 December 2022
Last Modified:	03 May 2023 18:49
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/155060

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