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| Research article summary (published 30 Mar 2002): |
Daytime sleepiness and its evaluation.
Full Abstract
Basic models of sleepiness, focusing on the homeostatic and circadian components of sleepiness, are able to predict important fluctuations of sleepiness. However, they fail in explaining certain sleepiness phenomena, as for instance in insomnia patients. To meet this shortcoming, modern models incorporate the arousal component of sleepiness, in addition to the sleep drive. While these models mainly concentrate on short-term changes in sleepiness, "state" sleepiness, there are indications that a stable characteristic level of sleepiness, "trait" sleepiness, is also an important determinant of a person's level of sleepiness. This leads to a conceptualization of sleepiness in which situational factors modify a basal level of sleep drive and arousal. It implies that sleepiness is not a unitary concept and can reflect essentially different states. Multiple sleepiness assessment tools have been proposed in the past. The majority of them offer valuable information, but they do not grasp all aspects of sleepiness. We should bear in mind that tools for assessing sleepiness are always operationalizations reflecting the theoretical framework the investigator has on sleepiness. Hence, rather than searching for a gold standard for the measurement of sleepiness, future research effort should be aimed at linking the various measurement techniques with the hypothesized underlying components of sleepiness on a sound empirical basis.
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Author information
Author/s: Cluydts, Raymond (R); De Valck, Elke (E); Verstraeten, Edwin (E); Theys, Paul (P);
Affiliation: Department of Cognitive and Physiological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. raymond.cluydts(-atsign-)vub.ac.be
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article
Journal: Sleep medicine reviews (Sleep Med Rev), published in England. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2002-Apr; vol 6 (issue 2) : pp 83-96
Dates: Created 2003/01/17; Completed 2003/02/14; Revised 2004/11/17;
PMID: 12531145, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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