Sleep deprivation can damage children’s brains

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

Sleep deprivation damages the brains of older children, researchers have found.

In a world-first study, experts from Boston Children’s Hospital found shorter sleep duration, taking a long time to get to sleep, waking up often and abnormal breathing during sleep made kids’ brains less efficient, flexible and resilient.

Getting less sleep can lead kids to struggle to understand attention, reward, memory, planning and co-ordination, all affecting their mental health.

It can even cause the kids to have difficulties controlling their behaviour and regulating their emotions.

The academics asked more than 5,500 parents of nine to 11-year-olds 26 questions about how their kids sleep, and then compared the answers with the results of MRI scans of the children’s brains while the kids rested.

They asked the parents about how long their child slept for, how long it takes for them to fall asleep, how much they wake up in the night and whether they struggle to get back to sleep, have trouble breathing, snore, get nightmares, struggle to wake up or feel sleepy during the day.

Strange changes were noticed in the brains of kids who got less sleep, which sometimes affected specific parts of the brain but other times they affected large circuits or the entire brain.

They found girls slept less than boys, averaging eight to nine hours shut-eye compared with nine to 11 hours for boys.

Non-white children, who made up around a third of study participants, slept less well than white children - again averaging eight to nine hours sleep compared with nine to 11 hours for white kids.

Spending less time asleep had disproportionately unhealthy effects on the brains of non-white children, the researchers added.

Children with rich parents slept better than their peers from more deprived neighbourhoods, while those who spend hours looking at screens were more likely to struggle to get a good night’s rest.

Overweight children were more likely to sleep less each night, and they moved more during the night, sweated, snored, had trouble waking and felt drowsy during the day.

Lead researcher Dr. Caterina Stamoulis said: “Early adolescence is a critical time in brain development.

“Preteens’ brain circuits are rapidly mutating, particularly those supporting higher-level thought processes like decision-making, problem-solving and the ability to process and integrate information from the outside world.

“We show inadequate sleep could have enormous implications for cognitive and mental health for individual children and at the population level.

“The network abnormalities we identified can potentially lead to deficits in multiple cognitive processes, including attention, reward, emotional regulation, memory, and the ability to plan, coordinate, and control actions and behaviours.”

The findings were published in the journal Cerebral Cortex Communications.

The research was funded by grants from the US National Science Foundation and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.