Nathan A Sollenberger, Logan R Cummings, Josefina Freitag, Elisa M Trucco, Sthefany Gomez, Melanie Giraldo, Gabriela Muse, Aaron T Mattfeld, Dana L McMakin
Negative reinforcement is proposed to mediate associations between sleep and alcohol use, especially among people with depression and/or anxiety symptoms. Worse sleep (e.g., shorter duration, less efficiency, more irregular timing) exacerbates negative emotions, which alcohol may temporarily relieve. Not yet examined, we propose sleep indirectly impacts early stages of alcohol use via differences in negative reinforcement learning (NRL), since sleep impacts emotion, reward response, and learning. The current study aimed to replicate associations between sleep and alcohol use, test associations with NRL, and examine indirect associations between sleep health and alcohol use via NRL among 60 underage college students (ages 18-20 years, 77% female) varying in depression and anxiety symptoms...
April 27, 2024: Alcohol