Abstract The effect of sleep deprivation on psychophysical performance and well-being is comprehensively investigated. Research investigating the effect of improved sleep is rare. Just as little exists about attempts to support athletic mental state and performance by improving sleep quality. This study aims to investigate whether sleep quality of top athletes can be improved by auditory brainwave entrainment and whether this leads to enhancements of post-sleep psychophysical states. In a pilot study, 15 young elite soccer players were stimulated for eight weeks during sleep with binaural beats around 2-8 Hz. Once a week after wake-up, participants completed three different questionnaires: a sleep diary, an adjective list for psychophysical and motivational state, and a self-assessment questionnaire for sleep and awakening quality. Fifteen sport students executed the same protocol sleeping on the same pillow, but without stimulation. Subjective ratings of sleep and awakening quality, sleepiness and motivational state were significantly improved only in the intervention group, but did not impact their perceived physical state. In summary, eight weeks of auditory stimulation with binaural beats improved perceived sleep quality and the post-sleep state of athletes, whereas the effect on physical level is assumed to occur in a time-delayed fashion. It seems to be worthwhile - to further elaborate long-time effects and consequences on physical and mental performance.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 167. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 April 2026.
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#305,230
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Outputs from European Journal of Sport Science
#47
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#1,775
of 240,933 outputs
Outputs of similar age from European Journal of Sport Science
#2
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Altmetric has tracked 34,307,719 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,196 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 20.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 17 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
