Insomnia disorder, characterized by chronic sleep disruption, often co-occurs with maladaptive emotional memory processing. However, much remains unknown regarding the evolution of emotional memories and their neural representations over time among individuals with insomnia disorder.

We examined the electroencephalographic (EEG) activities during emotional memory encoding, post-encoding sleep, and multiple retrieval phases – including immediate post-encoding, post-sleep, and a 7-day delayed retrieval – among 34 participants with insomnia disorder and 35 healthy control participants.

Healthy controls exhibited adaptive dissipation of emotional memory: memory declined over time, accompanied by reduced subjective feelings toward negative memories. In contrast, participants with insomnia exhibited impaired dissipation: they retained both the emotional content and affective tone of the memories, with diminished time-dependent declines in memory and affect. Beyond behavioral performance, only participants with insomnia maintained stable neural representations of emotion over time, a pattern absent in healthy controls. Additionally, during the post-encoding sleep, slow-wave sleep (SWS), and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep durations predicted the adaptive dissipation of emotional memory over time, but only among healthy participants.

These findings highlight abnormalities in emotional memory processing among individuals with insomnia disorder and underscore the important function of SWS and REM sleep in facilitating adaptive emotional memory processing.

Insomnia is underrecognized and inadequately managed, with close to 60% of cancer survivors experiencing insomnia at some point in the treatment trajectory. The objective of this study was to further understand predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors in the development and maintenance of insomnia in cancer survivors.

A heterogeneous sample of 63 patients who had completed active treatment was recruited. Participants were required to have a score >7 on the Insomnia Severity Index and meet the diagnostic criteria for insomnia disorder. Open-ended, semistructured interviews were conducted to elicit participants’ experiences with sleep problems. An a priori set of codes and a set of codes that emerged from the data were used to analyze the data.

The mean age of the sample was 60.5 years, with 30% identifying as non-white and 59% reporting their sex as female. The cancer types represented were heterogeneous with the two most common being breast (30%) and prostate (21%). Participants described an inherited risk for insomnia, anxious temperament, and insufficient ability to relax as predisposing factors. Respondents were split as to whether they classified their cancer diagnosis as the precipitating factor for their insomnia. Participants reported several behaviors that are known to perpetuate problems with sleep including napping, using back-lit electronics before bed, and poor sleep hygiene. One of the most prominent themes identified was the use of sleeping medications. Participants reported that they were reluctant to take medication but felt that it was the only option to treat their insomnia and that it was encouraged by their doctors.

Insomnia is a prevalent, but highly treatable, disorder in cancer survivors. Patients and provider education is needed to change individual and organizational behaviors that contribute to the development and maintenance of insomnia and increase access to evidence-based nonpharmacological interventions.