Ujma Péter P, Sándor Piroska, Szakadát Sára, Gombos Ferenc, Bódizs Róbert
Institute of Behavioural Science, Semmelweis University.
Department of General Psychology, Pázmány Péter Catholic University.
Dev Psychol. 2016 Dec;52(12):2118-2129. doi: 10.1037/dev0000233.
Sleep spindles act as a powerful marker of individual differences in cognitive ability. Sleep spindle parameters correlate with both age-related changes in cognitive abilities and with the age-independent concept of IQ. While some studies have specifically demonstrated the relationship between sleep spindles and intelligence in young children, our previous work in older subjects revealed sex differences in the sleep spindle correlates of IQ, which was never investigated in small children before. We investigated the relationship between age, Raven Colored Progressive Matrices (CPM) scores and sleep spindles in 28 young children (age 4-8 years, 15 girls). We specifically investigated sex differences in the psychometric correlates of sleep spindles. We also aimed to separate the correlates of sleep spindles that are because of age-related maturation from other effects that reflect an age-independent relationship between sleep spindles and general intelligence. Our results revealed a modest positive correlation between fast spindle amplitude and age. Raven CPM scores positively correlated with both slow and fast spindle amplitude, but this effect remained a tendency in males and vanished after correcting for the effects of age. Age-corrected correlations between Raven CPM scores and both slow and fast spindle amplitude were only significant in females. Overall, our results show that in male children sleep spindles are a maturational marker, but in female children they indicate trait-like intelligence, in line with previous studies in adolescent and adult subjects. Thalamocortical white matter connectivity may be the underlying mechanism behind both higher spindle amplitude and higher intelligence in female, but not male subjects. (PsycINFO Database Record
睡眠纺锤波是认知能力个体差异的有力标志。睡眠纺锤波参数与认知能力的年龄相关变化以及与智商的年龄无关概念均相关。虽然一些研究特别证明了睡眠纺锤波与幼儿智力之间的关系，但我们之前对年长受试者的研究揭示了智商的睡眠纺锤波相关性存在性别差异，而此前从未在幼儿中进行过此类研究。我们调查了28名幼儿（4至8岁，15名女孩）的年龄、瑞文彩色渐进矩阵（CPM）分数与睡眠纺锤波之间的关系。我们特别研究了睡眠纺锤波心理测量相关性中的性别差异。我们还旨在将因年龄相关成熟导致的睡眠纺锤波相关性与其他反映睡眠纺锤波与一般智力之间年龄无关关系的影响区分开来。我们的结果显示，快速纺锤波振幅与年龄之间存在适度的正相关。瑞文CPM分数与慢速和快速纺锤波振幅均呈正相关，但这种效应在男性中仅为一种趋势，在校正年龄影响后消失。经年龄校正后，瑞文CPM分数与慢速和快速纺锤波振幅之间的相关性仅在女性中显著。总体而言，我们的结果表明，在男童中睡眠纺锤波是成熟的标志，但在女童中它们表明类似特质的智力，这与之前对青少年和成年受试者的研究一致。丘脑皮质白质连接性可能是女性而非男性中较高纺锤波振幅和较高智力背后的潜在机制。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
