How Kids’ Brains Respond To A Late Night Up

Summary: A new study reports the parieto-occipital areas of the brain appear to be more susceptible to a lack of sleep in children.

Source: Frontiers.

Sleep deprivation affects children’s brains differently than adults’, according to a new study.

Any parent can tell you about the consequences of their child not getting enough sleep. But there is far less known about the details of how sleep deprivation affects children’s brains and what this means for early brain development.

“The process of sleep may be involved in brain ‘wiring’ in childhood and thus affect brain maturation,” explains Salome Kurth, first author of the study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and a researcher at the University Hospital of Zurich. “This research shows an increase in sleep need in posterior brain regions in children.”

This contrasts with what researchers know about the effects of sleep deprivation in adults, where the effect is typically concentrated in the frontal regions of the brain.

After staying up too late, both children and adults need a period of deep sleep to recover. This recovery phase is characterized by an increase in an electrical pattern called slow-wave activity, which can be measured with a non-invasive technique called an electroencephalogram. With a large number of electrode channels distributed across the scalp, this method also detects which brain regions show more slow-wave activity than others.

Supported by a large student team, Kurth and her colleagues, Monique LeBourgeois professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Sean Deoni , professor at Brown University, studied the effects of 50% sleep deprivation in a group of 13 children between the ages of 5 and 12 years. The team first measured the children’s deep sleep patterns during a normal night’s sleep. They then re-measured on another night after the researchers had kept the children up well past their bedtimes by reading and playing games with them.

After only getting half of a night’s worth of sleep, the children showed more slow-wave activity towards the back regions of the brain–the parieto-occipital areas. This suggests that the brain circuitry in these regions may be particularly susceptible to a lack of sleep.

The team also measured how this deep sleep activity correlated with the myelin content of the brain–a cornerstone of brain development. Myelin is a fatty microstructure of the brain’s white matter that allows electrical information between brain cells to travel faster. It can be measured with a specific magnetic resonance imaging technique.

Image shows a sleeping little girl.
After staying up too late, both children and adults need a period of deep sleep to recover. Neurosciencenews image is for illustrative purposes only.

“The results show that the sleep loss effect on the brain is specific to certain regions and that this correlates with the myelin content of the directly adjacent regions: the more myelin in a specific area, the more the effect appears similar to adults,” says Kurth. “It is possible that this effect is temporary and only occurs during a ‘sensitive period’ when the brain undergoes developmental changes.”

Further exploration is needed before drawing any conclusions about how insufficient sleep affects early brain developmental processes in the longer term. But for now, these results suggest that going to bed too late may have a different impact on kids’ brains than on adults’.

About this neuroscience research article

Funding:The Jacobs Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Clinical Research Priority Program Sleep and Health of the University of Zurich funded the study.

Source: Monica Favre – Frontiers
Image Source: This NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Full open access research for “Increased Sleep Depth in Developing Neural Networks: New Insights from Sleep Restriction in Children” by Salome Kurth, Douglas C. Dean III, Peter Achermann, Jonathan O’Muircheartaigh, Reto Huber, Sean C. L. Deoni and Monique K. LeBourgeois in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Published online September 21 2016 doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00456

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Frontiers. “How Kids’ Brains Respond To A Late Night Up.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 28 November 2016.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-deprivation-children-5618/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Frontiers. (2016, November 28). How Kids’ Brains Respond To A Late Night Up. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved November 28, 2016 from https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-deprivation-children-5618/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Frontiers. “How Kids’ Brains Respond To A Late Night Up.” https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-deprivation-children-5618/ (accessed November 28, 2016).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Increased Sleep Depth in Developing Neural Networks: New Insights from Sleep Restriction in Children

Brain networks respond to sleep deprivation or restriction with increased sleep depth, which is quantified as slow-wave activity (SWA) in the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG). When adults are sleep deprived, this homeostatic response is most pronounced over prefrontal brain regions. However, it is unknown how children’s developing brain networks respond to acute sleep restriction, and whether this response is linked to myelination, an ongoing process in childhood that is critical for brain development and cortical integration. We implemented a bedtime delay protocol in 5- to 12-year-old children to obtain partial sleep restriction (1-night; 50% of their habitual sleep). High-density sleep EEG was assessed during habitual and restricted sleep and brain myelin content was obtained using mcDESPOT magnetic resonance imaging. The effect of sleep restriction was analyzed using statistical non-parametric mapping with supra-threshold cluster analysis. We observed a localized homeostatic SWA response following sleep restriction in a specific parieto-occipital region. The restricted/habitual SWA ratio was negatively associated with myelin water fraction in the optic radiation, a developing fiber bundle. This relationship occurred bilaterally over parieto-temporal areas and was adjacent to, but did not overlap with the parieto-occipital region showing the most pronounced homeostatic SWA response. These results provide evidence for increased sleep need in posterior neural networks in children. Sleep need in parieto-temporal areas is related to myelin content, yet it remains speculative whether age-related myelin growth drives the fading of the posterior homeostatic SWA response during the transition to adulthood. Whether chronic insufficient sleep in the sensitive period of early life alters the anatomical generators of deep sleep slow-waves is an important unanswered question.

“Increased Sleep Depth in Developing Neural Networks: New Insights from Sleep Restriction in Children” by Salome Kurth, Douglas C. Dean III, Peter Achermann, Jonathan O’Muircheartaigh, Reto Huber, Sean C. L. Deoni and Monique K. LeBourgeois in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Published online September 21 2016 doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00456

Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.
Join our Newsletter
I agree to have my personal information transferred to AWeber for Neuroscience Newsletter ( more information )
Sign up to receive our recent neuroscience headlines and summaries sent to your email once a day, totally free.
We hate spam and only use your email to contact you about newsletters. You can cancel your subscription any time.