Associations Between Measures of Sleep Health and Cognitive Function in Older Adults

The study examined the relationship between sleep quality and cognitive abilities in 324 older adults (aged 55+ years) from Chicago. Sleep was measured using a wrist device over 7 days, tracking duration, fragmentation (disruption), sleep start time, and regularity. Participants completed tests assessing fluid intelligence and attention. Results showed that greater sleep fragmentation and lower sleep regularity were associated with worse cognitive performance. Conversely, longer sleep duration and earlier sleep start times were linked to better attention test results. However, during follow-up averaging 1.9 years, no relationship was found between sleep measures and changes in cognitive function over time.