Testing Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) protocol to counter the cognitive consequences of short sleep in young adult students

Abstract

Traditional Eastern meditation practices have elicited profound interest in the scientific community, subjecting them to various systematic neuropsychological investigations. Western researchers have adapted meditation practices to infer causal explanations for probable psychotherapeutic benefits in both clinical and non-clinical cohorts experiencing any difficulties on the psychophysiological spectrum. Sleep deficiency is one variable which has been unequivocally established to disrupt normal human functioning by varying degrees. Student populations are especially vulnerable to the undesirable repercussions of curtailed sleep, making sleep-related problems another crucial area of inquiry. Because meditation-induced changes have been observed in the cognitive realms of attention and memory, this study evaluated the effects of the meditation-based Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) protocol, derived from the practice of Yoga Nidra, in ameliorating the cognitive consequences of short sleep in young adult students. Twenty-seven sleep-deprived university students, aged 18-25 years, were recruited to participate in an online experiment designed to understand the effect of the NSDR protocol on attention and working memory, measured using the Stroop and n-back tasks, respectively, against a Podcast listening control condition. Repeated-measured ANOVA revealed non-significant effects of the intervention on both attention (p = .092) and working memory (p = .116), rendering the results inconclusive yet instructive of respective theoretical and methodological limitations in meditation research.