Lunar Cycle Influence on Sleep Parameters
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2021-08-20
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en
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The lunar cycle has been hypothesised to influence several internal, biological processes in organisms. One such process is sleep. Although effects have been found in non-human animals, studies researching this effect in humans report contradicting results. The relationship between the lunar cycle and sleep found in some studies seems to vary in strength and even direction. Furthermore, little is known about the influence of other variables, such as sex and daily activity, and often small sample sizes make it hard to draw conclusions on population level. This project aims to provide proof of principle for a method that can be used to analyse big, pre-existing datasets to look at the association between moon phase and different sleep parameters. The method is demonstrated here by applying it to a small sample (N = 29, in one male subject) to show its workings. The method consists of two pipelines. The first pipeline is used to acquire all relevant variables, while the second pipeline is used for the visualisation and testing of those variables over the course of the lunar cycle. Using the pipelines from this study, findings from previous studies could be replicated with a bigger sample size and better temporal precision, to shed light on the contradicting results of the lunar effects on several sleep scoring parameters in different populations and sleep conditions.
Keywords: Sleep, moon phase, lunar cycle, EEG
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen