Sleep duration and mental well-being are associated with delayed memory in a 12-week digital and remote community-sample study
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Unsupervised digital memory assessments are increasingly used in the field of Alzheimer’s disease to detect cognitive changes, recruit for clinical trials, and monitor cognitive changes longitudinally. However, the impact of factors like sleep and mental well-being on delayed memory task performance remains unclear. Adults aged 18 and older from a community sample across Germany (19-85 years) completed weekly a delayed memory recall task (Object-in-Room Recall, ORR) via the neotivTrials platform over 12 weeks. They also completed brief surveys on wake- and bedtime, and mental well-being (score created from happiness, calmness, energy, freshness, and interest items). Multilevel linear mixed models examined within- and between-person effects of sleep duration the night before testing ( n = 329) and mental well-being over the preceding eight days ( n = 234) on delayed associative memory. A quadratic term for sleep was included to test a hypothesized U-shape relationship, and interactions with age, gender, and subjective memory decline were analyzed. Sleeping more than one’s usual average the night before testing was associated with better delayed memory ( β = 0.03, p = 0.02), while no between-person sleep effects emerged. Better delayed memory performance was also linked to better mental well-being, both relative to one’s own average ( β = 0.05, p = 0.01) and the sample average ( β = 0.12, p = 0.01). These effects were consistent across age, gender, and subjective memory decline, except for a stronger mental well-being-performance association at older ages. No quadratic effects of within- or between-person sleep duration on delayed memory were found. These findings suggest that participants’ averages of sleep duration and mental well-being should be considered when interpreting performance on remote digital memory assessments. Additionally, by enabling frequent assessments, remote testing designs allow the examination of within-person associations between predictors and cognition, unlike cross-sectional assessments, which rely on potentially noisy one-time estimates.
Highlights
Sleeping longer than one’s typical average relates to better delayed memory performance.
Better mental well-being, relative to individual and group averages, is linked to better delayed memory.
Sleep duration and mental well-being should be accounted for when interpreting results from digital memory testing.
Author Summary
Remote digital assessments of memory are increasingly being used to identify individuals at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease, support clinical trial recruitment, and monitor cognitive changes over time. These tests are completed in naturalistic settings and are repeated frequently, providing a practical way to capture memory performance in everyday life. However, they are performed in unsupervised settings, and it is unclear how factors like sleep or mental well-being influence performance on such tests. To explore this, we asked adults from the community to take memory tests online for over 12 weeks and complete short surveys about their sleep duration and how they were feeling. We found that people had better memory after sleeping more than they usually did. Feeling mentally better, both compared with one’s own usual state and compared to others, was also linked to better memory. These patterns were similar across age, gender, and self-reported memory concerns, though mental well-being had a stronger effect for older adults. The findings highlight the importance of considering both sleep and psychological well-being when interpreting memory test results collected remotely. Moreover, they highlight how longitudinal designs allow the investigation of how individual’s factors influence memory over time by tracking day-to-day changes.
