Alcohol and the sleeping brain

“…In addition, AUD history was associated with worse sleep disturbance, sleep quality, sleep latency, and daytime dysfunction. These findings are consistent with prior literature demonstrating that alcohol misuse may negatively impact sleep quality ( Koob & Colrain, 2020 ; Chakravorty et al, 2016 ; Colrain et al, 2014 ).…”

“…In particular, we noted the difficulty in predicting anomalies in those who have more "unhealthy" lifestyles (i.e., frequent consumption of alcohol, smoking, and no physical exercise) and in those who have existing diseases. In line with existing studies, we noted that these participants are often characterized by increased sleep fragmentation (which negatively affects sleep duration [82]), reduction in sleep quality [83], and increased sleep disturbance [84]; as a consequence, their HR patterns exhibited greater variance and were usually noisy, which made it more difficult for the labeling algorithm to classify points as anomalies, and for the anomaly detection models to identify them. The obtained results further underline the already known importance of leading a healthy lifestyle.…”

“…The sample of adolescents in NCANDA drank at moderate-heavy levels, however, none of them met criteria for an AUD. Our findings therefore point to the sensitivity of sleep processes to the initiation of alcohol use in adolescence and are concerning given the literature in adolescents and adults showing the chronic effects on sleep architecture of heavy alcohol use [36]. Adolescents who used alcohol or binge drank have significantly shorter sleep duration (<8 h) than those who do not (>8 h) [87], with students getting <5 h of sleep being 68% more likely to use alcohol, and 149% more likely to binge drink [88].…”

“…Adults with AUD have shorter TST, poorer SE, less SWS, as well as abnormalities in REM sleep duration and latency compared to age-matched healthy controls [71,[89][90][91], that persist long into abstinence, and are a significant predictor of relapse [92,93]. Our results, showing multiple associations with drinking and REM sleep both in the microstructure and in macrostructure analysis, suggest that REM sleep is highly sensitive to the effects of alcohol use, which could reflect effects of alcohol on REM-on/off systems in the brain [36] or could involve interactions between alcohol and neurodevelopment affecting REM regulation. In fact, alterations in %REM sleep and REM sleep EEG were also associated with cannabis use.…”