Presenter(s): Faith Collins
Faculty Mentor(s): Don Tucker
Oral Session 2 SW
Insomnia, a common sleep disorder, is associated with difficulties initiating sleep (i.e., sleep onset latency). Pharmacological interventions provide moderate relief, but because of habituation and growing problems with substance abuse and addiction, there has been a push by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify non-pharmacological interventions for such conditions. One possible intervention for insomnia is listening to music to improve sleep onset latency. This study is a 3-week intervention in which participants will listen to 45 minutes of slow, rhythmic music as they are falling asleep. Tononi et al., (2010) administered brief tones at 0.8 and 2 Hz (delta frequency), a rate that approximates the natural cellular oscillation of cortical neurons during sleep. They found these tones improved sleep slow waves. Thus, we hypothesize that delta frequency music will improve sleep latency and catalyze the transition into slow wave sleep, similar to the results reported by Tononi, (2010). An a priori power analysis suggested this study will require 10 subjects. The inclusion criteria are aged 18- 65, and a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score >5. The exclusion criterion is a yes response to any item on the Self- reported Comorbidity Questionnaire (SCQ). A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) including within and between interactions will be utilized. The independent variable is group (normal sleepers and insomniacs). Dependent measures include pre- post-PSQI score, sleep onset latency in minutes, a Likert scale sleep quality report, and a sleep log of sleep onset and sleep time in minutes.