Lauren Whitehurst
University of Kentucky, KY·Psychology
Heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are rising quickly among women. Yet most research on alcohol's harms has focused on men.
- Fields
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Neuroscience
- Topics
alcohol
sleep
polysomnography
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Test whether women show greater alcohol-induced sleep disruption than men, by giving intravenous alcohol or saline placebo before eight hours of lab sleep recorded with polysomnography in adults aged 21–45.
- Determine whether alcohol disrupts women's sleep more in the late luteal phase than in the mid-follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, comparing paired alcohol and placebo lab sessions in each phase.
- Test whether estradiol is linked to less, and progesterone to more, alcohol-disrupted sleep, relating hormone levels to lab polysomnography and at-home actigraphy measures.
- Track naturalistic sleep and drinking at home over two 5-day periods using actigraphy, daily sleep diaries and alcohol wrist sensors in each menstrual phase.
More about the research
Alcohol makes people sleepy at first, but later in the night it causes frequent awakenings and disrupts rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage linked to dreaming. Women already face higher rates of insomnia, partly because ovarian hormones that shift across the menstrual cycle affect sleep. Women may also be more sensitive to alcohol's effects on sleep. This project asks how sex, menstrual cycle phase and sex hormones shape the way alcohol disrupts sleep.
Why it matters
Alcohol-disrupted sleep may be an overlooked harm of rising heavy drinking among women, and sleep affects thinking, stress and well-being. Knowing how sex and hormone fluctuations change alcohol's effects on sleep could guide interventions to cut drinking and protect sleep in women across their reproductive years.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anna Konova
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Neuroscience
Test whether experimentally induced craving shifts the brain's drug-specific value signals in 89 patients with opioid use disorder, using a value-based choice task during fMRI with craving and control sessions.
Kimberly Mallett
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Psychology
Assess the feasibility of adding personalized transdermal alcohol concentration (TAC) feedback, based on wearable skin sensors that track alcohol levels, to the eCHECKUP TO GO intervention for high-risk college drinkers.
Michael Arthur Russell
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether TAC sensor features, namely rise rate, peak and rise duration of each day's alcohol curve, predict alcohol-related consequences on individual drinking days, compared with EMA phone self-reports, in 500 young adults.
The school
University of Kentucky: 34 labs on PI Pages, $528M a year on research, 319 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.