ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Sex differences in the circadian regulation of sleep and waking cognition in humans.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 149 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
149 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 281 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sleep disturbances in Lewy body dementia: A systematic review.International journal of geriatric psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Is Balance Control Affected by Sleep Deprivation? A Systematic Review of the Impact of Sleep on the Control of Balance.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Sex Differences in the Association between Night Shift Work and the Risk of Cancers: A Meta-Analysis of 57 Articles.Disease markers · 2018Pooled it
- Low-Dose Melatonin, Climacteric Symptoms and Sleep in Female Shift Workers: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of pineal research · 2026Trial
- Resetting of the Human Circadian Melatonin Rhythm by Ambient Hypoxia.Journal of pineal research · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Effects of short-chain fatty acid-butyrate supplementation on expression of circadian-clock genes, sleep quality, and inflammation in patients with active ulcerative colitis: a double-blind randomized controlled trial.Lipids in health and disease · 2024Trial
- Efficacy of intermittent exposure to bright light for treating maladaptation to night work on a counterclockwise shift work rotation.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2021Trial
- Trial
- Early evening light mitigates sleep compromising physiological and alerting responses to subsequent late evening light.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- Chronic exposure to artificial light at night dampens rhythms in locomotor activity, metabolism, and sleep in female mice.Physiology & behavior · 2026Article
- Human data at odds and in confirmation of the two-process model of sleep regulation-a perspective.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2026Review
- The Co-Evolution of Sleep and Diet: Toward an Emerging Framework of Evolutionary Chrononutrition in Circadian-Metabolic Health.Nutrients · 2026Review
- Exercise Timing in Sport: Molecular and Physiological Mechanisms Linking Performance, Recovery, and Biological Cost.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Wild-Derived House Mice (Mus musculus) Are Able to Cope With a Constant Light Environment.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2026Article
- Predicting Performance in Working Memory During the Waking Period by Applying a Convolutional Neural Network to EEG Data in the N-Back Task: A Pilot Study.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sex-associated circadian signaling signatures in the lateral hypothalamus.Frontiers in sleep · 2026Article
- Exploring the differences in neural oscillation mechanisms before and after sleep deprivation.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex and the clock: Exploring sex differences in chronotype and circadian behavior among healthy older adults.PloS one · 2026Article
- Latent brain subtypes of chronotype reveal unique behavioral and health profiles across population cohorts.Nature communications · 2025Article
89 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
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The sleep-wake cycle and circadian rhythmicity both contribute to brain function, but whether this contribution differs between men and women and how it varies across cognitive domains and subjective dimensions has not been established. We examined the circadian and sleep-wake-dependent regulation of cognition in 16 men and 18 women in a forced desynchrony protocol and quantified the separate contributions of circadian phase, prior sleep, and elapsed time awake on cognition and sleep. The largest circadian effects were observed for reported sleepiness, mood, and reported effort; the effects on working memory and temporal processing were smaller. Although these effects were seen in both men and women, there were quantitative differences. The amplitude of the circadian modulation was larger in women in 11 of 39 performance measures so that their performance was more impaired in the early morning hours. Principal components analysis of the performance measures yielded three factors, accuracy, effort, and speed, which reflect core performance characteristics in a range of cognitive tasks and therefore are likely to be important for everyday performance. The largest circadian modulation was observed for effort, whereas accuracy exhibited the largest sex difference in circadian modulation. The sex differences in the circadian modulation of cognition could not be explained by sex differences in the circadian amplitude of plasma melatonin and electroencephalographic slow-wave activity. These data establish the impact of circadian rhythmicity and sex on waking cognition and have implications for understanding the regulation of brain function, cognition, and affect in shift-work, jetlag, and aging.
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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.