In October 2025, a new publication uncovered five distinct “sleep-biopsychosocial” profiles in healthy young adults, each linked to its own pattern of brain connectivity. The study revealed that various dimensions of sleep (duration, disturbance, medication use, and satisfaction) correspond to distinct psychosocial and neural profiles.

The research collected and analysed data from 770 adults in the Human Connectome Project. The team examined seven different sleep features, including satisfaction, disturbances, latency, daytime functioning, and use of sleep aids. These were matched with 118 lifestyle, mental-health, cognitive and personality variables, along with resting-state brain scans.

The study identified five distinct sleep-biopsychosocial profiles.

1.The first group showed generally poor sleep with low satisfaction, long sleep latency, frequent disturbances and daytime impairment. This group of people is usually suffering depression, anxiety, anger and somatic complaints.

2.The second group exhibited daytime dysfunction despite reporting no sleep difficulties, suggesting a form of sleep resilience. They have also been associated with attentional problems, including ADHD-like traits, low conscientiousness and heightened stress.

3.The third group was defined as sleep medication users, who paired with poorer visual memory and emotion recognition, but showed stronger social relationship satisfaction.

4.The fourth profile captured short sleepers (under 6–7 hours) who showed slower responses, reduced cognitive accuracy, lower fluid intelligence, impaired social cognition, higher aggression and lower agreeableness.

5.The fifth group experienced significant sleep disturbances such as nocturia, awakenings and breathing issues, and was associated with anxiety, cognitive deficits, aggression, substance abuse and other internalising symptoms.

The study revealed that sleep is not a single trait, but a complex set of dimensions tied to emotional health, lifestyle patterns and the brain’s functional architecture. Researchers also identified distinct resting-state brain-connectivity fingerprints for several profiles, suggesting that sleep-related behaviour is reflected in the structure of neural communication pathways. This multidimensional mapping provides a more precise framework for understanding sleep’s role in mental health, cognition and daily functioning. It provides an opportunity for the profile-based sleep interventions to enhance the future precision medicine.