Investigation of the impact of total sleep deprivation at home on the number of intrusive memories to an analogue trauma

Participants wore an actiwatch for 5 days before the experimental session. In the evening of day 0, the participants were shown the trauma film. Before watching the film, the participants completed a mood visual analogue scale (mVAS) and the emotional response (ER) task. Immediately following the trauma film, participants completed the mVAS again as well as the peritraumatic dissociative experiences questionnaire (PDEQ) and personal relevance questions (PR). After a 30-min structured break, participants rated their initial experience of intrusive memories of the film (using a visual analogue scale, iVAS) and completed the ER task again. Participants were then instructed how to fill in the intrusion diary, in which they recorded the number of intrusive memories of the film daily and then randomised to either the sleep-deprived (asked to remain awake from the time of the film on day 0 to the end of day 1) or the sleep group (allowed to sleep at the end of day 0), set up with polysomnography (PSG), and returned home. On day 2, once all participants had had at least one night of sleep they returned to the lab to complete the ER task again, as well as explicit memory tasks (EM tasks