Citation

Horne JA, Pankhurst FL, Reyner LA, Hume K, Diamond ID. Sleep 1994; 17(2): 146-159.

Affiliation

Department of Human Sciences, Loughborough University, U.K.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1994, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Publisher Associated Professional Sleep Societies)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8036369

Abstract

This field study assessed the effects of nighttime aircraft noise on actimetrically measured sleep in 400 people (211 women and 189 men; 20-70 years of age; one per household) habitually living at eight sites adjacent to four U.K. airports, with different levels of night flying. Subjects wore wrist-actimeters for 15 nights and completed morning sleep logs. A sample of 178 nights of sleep electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded synchronously with actigrams. The EEG was used to develop filters for the raw actigrams, in order to: (1) estimate sleep onset and (2) compare actigrams with aircraft noise events (ANEs). Actigrams, filtered to detect the onset of discrete movements, were able to detect 88% of all EEG-determined periods of interim wakefulness of > 15 seconds and periods of movement time of > 10 seconds. The main findings were: (1) actimetry and self-reports showed that only a minority of ANEs affected sleep, and, for most of our subjects, that domestic and idiosyncratic factors had much greater effects; (2) despite large between-site variations in ANEs, the difference between sites in overall sleep disturbance was not significant; (3) there was a diminished actimetric response to ANEs in the first hour of sleep and, apparently, also in the last hour of sleep; and (4) men had significantly more discrete movements than women and were more likely to respond to ANEs.

Language: en