Sleep Disturbance-Induced Cognitive Impairment in Collegiates: Effects of Brain Wave Entrainment and Aerobic Exercise

Problems related to sleep are very common in modern society. Consequences of sleep problems can be many out of which decrements incognitive performance is amongst the top ranked ill effect. Physiologically, lack of slow wave activity (SWA) occurring duringslow-wave sleep (SWS) is by far the most argued reason for cognitivedecline associated with sleep problems. Moreover, SWA and its coupling with othersleep features, reorganizes cortical circuitry, supporting cognition. SWA enhancement techniques range from behavioural interventions (such asvarious forms of exercises), which have high feasibility but low specificity,to laboratory based techniques (such as brain wave stimulation), which havehigh specificity but are less feasible for widespread use. Here, we propose to examine the effects of two SWA enhancement techniques on sleep and cognitive functions. Therefore, the present study is a randomised, single blinded, multiple arm comparative trial to ascertain the effects of non invasive, non pharmacological SWA enhancement techniques, i.e., Aerobic exercise and Brain wave entrainment on sleep and cognition in collegiate students. Apart from sleep and cognition, this study also intends to investigate the effect of SWA enhancement techniques on stress, anxiety, quality of life, well-being and biomarkers of sleep and cognitive function in sleep disturbed collegiate students. This study is to be conducted in Jamia Millia Islamia. The participants will be recruited from the University campus. If came out with positive results, this study protocol has the potential to be used for improving sleep as well as cognitive functions inuniversity students.