Habituation of sleep to road traffic noise observed not by polygraphy but by perception

The habituation of sleep to road traffic noise was investigated. Habituation of sleep is improvement of sleep quality. Nine male students aged 19-21 were exposed to tape-recorded road traffic noise of L-eq 49.6 dB(A) in an experimental bedroom. Among 17 nights, the first four and the last three nights were non-exposure nights and the other consecutive 10 were exposure nights, The polygraphic sleep parameters were: sleep stages S1, S2, S(3 + 4), rapid eye movements (REM), and so on. Subjective sleep quality was assessed by five scales of a self-rating sleep questionnaire named the OSA, sleepiness (F1), sleep maintenance (F2), worry (F3), integrated sleep feeling (F4), and sleep initiation (F5). In this experiment, the habituation of sleep to road traffic noise was observed clearly in all of the subjective sleep parameters of the OSA, though all of the polygraphic sleep parameters showed little or no evidence of habituation. This suggests that habituation to noise has two aspects, sensation and perception mechanisms, corresponding to sleep polygraphy and to questionnaire respectively. (C) 2002 Academic Press.