Alternated emotional working memory in individuals with subclinical insomnia disorder: An electrophysiological study

The deleterious effects of sleep loss on sleep-dependent memory and emotional function have been documented in the current literature. Yet, the effects of insomnia-induced chronic sleep disturbance on emotional short-term memory have been scarcely investigated. Twenty-one participants with subclinical insomnia disorder (SID) and 20 healthy participants (healthy control, HC) performed a delayed recognition task of emotional faces, and event-related potentials (ERPs) involved in memory encoding, retention, and retrieval of faces across different emotional valences were assessed. Behavioral findings revealed that participants in the SID group had a larger response bias, being more likely to perceive negative faces as “old” faces presented in the retrieval phase than those in the HC group. ERP findings revealed that emotional faces in the SID vs. HC group induced significantly smaller P1 and late P3b and larger N170 amplitudes in the encoding phase and smaller negative slow wave (NSW) in the retention phase. In retrieval phase, the interaction between Sleep group and Valence were revealed for P1 and early P3b amplitudes, but no group differences were found after Bonferroni correction. These findings suggested that insomnia induced chronic sleep disturbance would influence performance on emotional working memory and induced processing phase specific regulation of neurophysiology in emotional working memory regardless of valence.