When it comes to sleep, traditional advice has focused on the number of hours a person sleeps. But for older adults, the quality of sleep may affect cognitive performance the following day regardless of their quantity of sleep, according to a new study by researchers from the Penn State College of Health and Human Development and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York.
In a study published this week (Dec. 17) in Sleep Health, the researchers found that the quality of a night of sleep - rather than the length of the night of sleep - predicted how quickly older adults processed information the next day. The researchers evaluated sleep quality based on how much time someone was awake between when they first went to sleep and when they rose in the morning.
