Reported sleep duration reveals segmentation of the adult life-course into three phases

Antoine Coutrot (1, 2, 3) , A S Lazar (4) , M Richards (5) , E Manley (6) , J M Wiener (7) , R C Dalton (8) , M Hornberger (4) , H J Spiers (5)

1 LIRIS - Laboratoire d'InfoRmatique en Image et Systèmes d'information
2 SICAL - Situated Interaction, Collaboration, Adaptation and Learning
3 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
4 UEA - University of East Anglia [Norwich]
5 UCL - University College of London [London]
6 University of Leeds
7 BU - Bournemouth University [Poole]
8 Lancaster University

Classically the human life-course is characterized by youth, middle age and old age. A wide range of biological, health and cognitive functions vary across this life-course. Here, using reported sleep duration from 730,187 participants across 63 countries, we find three distinct phases in the adult human lifecourse: early adulthood (19-33yrs), mid-adulthood (34-53yrs), and late adulthood (54+yrs). They appear stable across culture, gender, education and other demographics. During the third phase, where self-reported sleep duration increases with age, cognitive performance, as measured by spatial navigation, was found to have an inverted u-shape relationship with reported sleep duration: optimal performance peaks at 7 hours reported sleep. Worldwide self-reported sleep duration patterns are geographically clustered, and are associated with economy, culture, and latitude.

Domaines: Sciences cognitives

Antoine Coutrot, A S Lazar, M Richards, E Manley, J M Wiener, et al.. Reported sleep duration reveals segmentation of the adult life-course into three phases. Nature Communications, 2022, 13 (7697), ⟨10.1038/s41467-022-34624-8⟩. ⟨hal-03896889⟩