Diurnal fluctuations in subjective sleep time in humans

Humans have the ability to estimate the passage of time in the absence of external time cues. In this study, we subjected 22 healthy males (aged 21.8 ± 1.9 years) to a 40-min nap trial followed by 80 min of wakefulness repeated over 28 h, and investigated the relationship between various sleep parameters and the discrepancy (ΔST) of time estimation ability (TEA) during sleep, defined by the difference between actual sleep time (ST) and subjective sleep time (sub-ST) in each nap interval. Both ST and sub-ST were significant diurnal fluctuations with the peak in the early morning (9 h after dim-light melatonin onset time, 2 h after nadir time of core body temperature rhythm), and subjective sleep duration was estimated to be longer than actual times in all nap intervals (sub-ST > ST). There were significant diurnal fluctuations in discrepancy (sub-ST–ST) of TEA during sleep, and the degree of discrepancy correlated positively with increase in the amount of REM sleep and decrease in the amount of slow-wave sleep. These findings suggest that human TEA operates at a certain level of discrepancy during sleep, and that this discrepancy might be related to the biological clock and its associated sleep architecture.