Can a tDCS treatment enhance subjective and objective sleep among student-athletes?

Abstract

Introduction

Previous studies have shown that student-athletes suffer from sleep difficulties. This study explored the impact of tDCS on sleep parameters among student-athletes.

Method

Thirty student-athletes (15 females, 15 males, age 21.1 ± 2.1 years) were recruited. All participants underwent a series of questions to rule out depressive and anxiety disorders or any specific tDCS exclusion criteria. All participants were advised to maintain their usual sleep schedule.

Results

Compared polysomnographic and Psychomotor Vigilance Task data analyses did not show any improvement after experimental tDCS. Regardless of groups, PVT mean reaction time was decreased. Regarding the questionnaires, data analyses showed improvement on the PSQI (p < .001), ISI (p < .001) and ASSQ (p < .007) scores after tDCS.

Discussion

tDCS appears to increase total sleep time and should be further explored. Improvements in subjective sleep suggest that tDCS bears interesting possibilities into the enhancement of sleep among student-athletes.

Keywords:

• Polysomnography
• sleep
• student-athletes
• tDCS

Acknowledgements

We thank the athletes for participating in the study. We also thank all the persons involved in this study at Cerebra Health.

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of Canada and received approval from the Research Center of the Mental Health University Laval.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.