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Sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) and electro-oculogram (EOG) patterns were obtained on three nights from 10 healthy male subjects, ages 41 to 46. Values for sleep period time, total sleep time, ratio of stage 1-rapid-eye-movement (REM) time to non-REM (NREM) time, and sleep efficiency did not differ significantly between the first night and subsequent nights, i.e., there was no “first night effect” in this age group. When compared to younger subjects (ages 13 to 15 years), these middleaged males exhibited shorter total sleep times, shorter REM periods, greater percentages of stages 0 and 2, lesser percentages of stages 1-REM and 4, and shorter latencies to stages 0 and 1-REM. When compared to older subjects (ages 60 to 69 years), the middle-aged males exhibited a fewer number of stages and awakenings, a lesser percentage of stage 1, a greater percentage of stage 3, and a shorter latency to stage 3. In addition, in the middle-aged males there was generally a shift of REM toward the early part of the night and a deterioration in various qualitative aspects of the EEG. This age appears to represent a transition phase in the ontogeny of sleep, and different subjects were at different stages of the transition, as evidenced by the high variability in some measures. These data provide solid control data for studies of insomnia, which is characteristically a middle-age complaint, and fill a notable gap in the knowledge concerning the ontogeny of human sleep.
Williams et al. (Sat,) studied this question.