O012 Do healthy sleepers demonstrate sleep-wake state discrepancy?

Abstract Sleep-wake state discrepancy is a common phenomenon for individuals with insomnia, where an individual self-reports worse sleep parameter values than observed in polysomnography-derived values. However, this presumes there is no systematic bias in polysomnography-derived versus self-report sleep estimates in healthy individuals, which may not be true. This study aimed to test for potential bias in sleep-wake state discrepancy in a group of healthy individuals (N=49, aged 33.9±14.1 years) who underwent in-laboratory polysomnography (PSG) and completed a concurrent self-reported sleep diary. Healthy individuals demonstrated sleep-wake state discrepancy for multiple sleep parameters, reflected as ‘better’ self-reported sleep values than PSG-derived. For total sleep time (TST), there was a significant difference (of 51.3 minutes, p <.001.) between the sleep diary reported TST (495.8±50.1) and the PSG-derived TST (M=444.5±62.6). Similar findings were also found for wake after sleep onset (diary: M=27.1±34.2, PSG: M=94.9±62.9, p <.001), sleep efficiency (diary: M=90.6%±8.7, PSG: M=75.2%±11.9, p <.001), and sleep onset latency (diary: M=27.4±22.2, PSG: M=53.7±38.0, p <.001). These observations in healthy sleepers are in the opposite direction usually observed in individuals with insomnia. These findings help inform the premise that self-reporting worse sleep parameters than PSG-derived is not a typical phenomenon in healthy individuals; it may be unique to individuals with sleep disorders (i.e., insomnia) and therefore warrants appropriate detection and treatment. Continued research in establishing age/gender-appropriate cut-off levels of healthy sleep-wake state discrepancy in the general population is needed to facilitate more effective detection and treatment of clinically meaningful sleep-wake state discrepancy in those with sleep disorders.