Abstract
BackgroundWhile the importance of adequate sleep duration to normal brain development is well known, more studies are needed to characterize how undiagnosed sleep disturbance other than suboptimal sleep duration may impact brain development. In this study we aim to understand the relationships between sleep disturbance measures and cortical morphometry in typically-developing children without previous diagnoses of sleep pathology.MethodsHealthy 8-year-old children (30 boys, 37 girls) without clinical diagnosis of sleep disorders were prospectively recruited for brain MRI and their parents completed the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ). Total sleep disturbance score, as well as 8 subscales including bedtime resistance, sleep onset delay, sleep duration, sleep anxiety, night waking, parasomnias, sleep disordered breathing, and daytime sleepiness were calculated, and their relationships with cortical morphometry features including cortical gray matter volume, cortical thickness, and surface area were investigated, controlled for total cortical volume and sex.ResultsThe CSHQ total sleep disturbance score significantly correlated with cortical surface area in a cluster in the left middle temporal gyrus (P < 0.001, R = -0.54). In addition, the bedtime resistance subscale negatively correlated with cortical surface area in a cluster in the right fusiform gyrus (P < 0.001, R = -0.50). No other clusters showed significant relationships between CSHQ total score or subscales and cortical features for this cohort.ConclusionSignificant relationships between sleep disturbance scores in typically-developing children without clinical diagnosis of sleep pathology and their brain cortical surface area in two temporal lobe regions were identified, suggesting that undiagnosed sleep disturbance may potentially impact brain development even in healthy children.
Highlights
The importance of adequate sleep to normal brain development in children is well known (Bell-McGinty et al 2004)
The total sleep disturbance scores for all children were lower than the reported average score (54) of a clinical cohort, other than the single subject that was excluded
The Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ) total sleep disturbance score significantly correlated with cortical surface area in one cluster in the left middle temporal gyrus (Fig. 1)
Summary
The importance of adequate sleep to normal brain development in children is well known (Bell-McGinty et al 2004). Like many other family environmental and lifestyle factors that may potentially impact children’s brain development, sleep quality is important for brain development in children, as studies have demonstrated significant relationships between sleep duration and cortical gray matter volume in children with impacts on cognitive performance (Gogtay et al 2010), and reduction of cortical gray matter volume (Mindell et al 2016) and changes of cortical thickness (Okada et al 2017) in children with obstructive sleep apnea. More studies are needed to characterize the relationships between sleep quality and children’s brain structural development in terms of cortical morphometry such as gray matter volume, cortical thickness, and surface area. In this study we aim to understand the relationships between sleep disturbance measures and cortical morphometry in typically-developing children without previous diagnoses of sleep pathology
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