ArticleBiology of mood & anxiety disorders2015
Sleep and REM sleep disturbance in the pathophysiology of PTSD: the role of extinction memory.
Article in Biology of mood & anxiety disorders, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 3 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 114 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Circadian Influence on Fear Extinction Resulting From Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD
Mechanisms Underlying the Efficacy of Prolonged Exposure
Mechanisms Underlying Efficacy of Prolonged Exposure
Who cites it
114 citing papers in PubMed, 244 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Effect of Suvorexant on Fear Extinction Recall: A Double-Blind Randomised Controlled Pilot Trial in Healthy Individuals.Journal of sleep research · 2025Trial
- Sleep efficiency predicts improvements in fear extinction and PTSD symptoms during prolonged exposure for veterans with comorbid insomnia.Psychiatry research · 2023Trial
- Sleep impairments in refugees diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder: a polysomnographic and self-report study.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2023Trial
- Brief behavioral treatment for insomnia decreases trauma-related nightmare frequency in veterans.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2022Trial
- Sleep reactivation did not boost suppression-induced forgetting.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Impact of sleep on complicated grief severity and outcomes.Depression and anxiety · 2020Trial
- Sleep quality and treatment of social anxiety disorder.Anxiety, stress, and coping · 2019Trial
- Effects of post-exposure naps on exposure therapy for social anxiety.Psychiatry research · 2018Trial
- Trial
- Early risk factors and six month posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity following trauma.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2026Article
- Temporal associations between nightmares and PTSD symptoms in the acute post-sexual assault period: An ecological momentary assessment study.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2026Article
- Slow Oscillation-Sleep Spindle Coupling Is Associated With Expectancy Measures of Fear Extinction Retention in Trauma-Exposed Individuals.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Enhancing primary care detection and referral of nightmare disorder: a quality improvement initiative : Journal name: Sleep and Breathing.Sleep & breathing = Schlaf & Atmung · 2026Article
- Dimensions of trauma: The relationship between daytime PTSD cluster symptomology and sleep measures.Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · 2026Article
- Experimentally induced REM sleep fragmentation affects psychophysiological habituation to emotional stimuli.Sleep · 2026Article
- Sleep is associated with posttraumatic stress symptom severity in patients with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator depending on age.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Learning, sleep replay and consolidation of contextual fear memories: A neural network model.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Behavioral phenotype analysis highlights sleep heterogeneity and brain cellular activations in a mouse model of PTSD.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Sleepless hours: the lived experience of chronic insomnia and anxiety across the US care spectrum.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Redefining Chemotherapy-Related Headaches: From Pathobiology to Differential Diagnosis and Management.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
54 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is accompanied by disturbed sleep and an impaired ability to learn and remember extinction of conditioned fear. Following a traumatic event, the full spectrum of PTSD symptoms typically requires several months to develop. During this time, sleep disturbances such as insomnia, nightmares, and fragmented rapid eye movement sleep predict later development of PTSD symptoms. Only a minority of individuals exposed to trauma go on to develop PTSD. We hypothesize that sleep disturbance resulting from an acute trauma, or predating the traumatic experience, may contribute to the etiology of PTSD. Because symptoms can worsen over time, we suggest that continued sleep disturbances can also maintain and exacerbate PTSD. Sleep disturbance may result in failure of extinction memory to persist and generalize, and we suggest that this constitutes one, non-exclusive mechanism by which poor sleep contributes to the development and perpetuation of PTSD. Also reviewed are neuroendocrine systems that show abnormalities in PTSD, and in which stress responses and sleep disturbance potentially produce synergistic effects that interfere with extinction learning and memory. Preliminary evidence that insomnia alone can disrupt sleep-dependent emotional processes including consolidation of extinction memory is also discussed. We suggest that optimizing sleep quality following trauma, and even strategically timing sleep to strengthen extinction memories therapeutically instantiated during exposure therapy, may allow sleep itself to be recruited in the treatment of PTSD and other trauma and stress-related disorders.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.