Department of Sleep and Cognition, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Department of Clinical Child and Adolescent Studies, Institute of Education and Child Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
J Sleep Res. 2019 Feb;28(1):e12779. doi: 10.1111/jsr.12779. Epub 2018 Oct 18.
The macro- and microstructural characteristics of sleep electroencephalography have been associated with several aspects of executive functioning. However, only a few studies have addressed the association of sleep characteristics with the learning involved in the acquisition of executive functions, and no study has investigated this for planning and problem-solving skills in the developing brain of children. The present study examined whether children's sleep stages and microstructural sleep characteristics are associated with performance improvement over repeated assessments of the Tower of Hanoi task, which requires integrated planning and problem-solving skills. Thirty children (11 boys, mean age 10.7 years, SD = 0.8) performed computerized parallel versions of the Tower of Hanoi three times across 2 days, including a night with polysomnographically assessed sleep. Pearson correlations were used to evaluate the associations of Tower of Hanoi solution time improvements across repeated assessments with sleep stages (% of total sleep time), slow-wave activity, and fast and slow spindle features. The results indicated a stronger performance improvement across wake in children with more Stage N2 sleep and less slow-wave sleep. Stronger improvements across sleep were present in children in whom slow spindles were more dense, and in children in whom fast spindles were less dense, of shorter duration and had less power. The findings indicate that specific sleep electroencephalography signatures reflect the ability of the developing brain to acquire and improve on integrated planning and problem-solving skills.
睡眠脑电图的宏观和微观结构特征与执行功能的几个方面有关。然而，只有少数研究探讨了睡眠特征与执行功能习得中涉及的学习之间的关系，也没有研究调查过这一点在儿童发育大脑中的计划和解决问题技能。本研究考察了儿童的睡眠阶段和微观结构睡眠特征是否与反复评估汉诺塔任务（需要综合规划和解决问题的技能）的表现改善有关。30 名儿童（11 名男孩，平均年龄 10.7 岁，标准差=0.8）在 2 天内通过计算机化的平行版本进行了三次汉诺塔任务，包括一次睡眠的多导睡眠图评估。Pearson 相关系数用于评估汉诺塔任务解决时间在重复评估中随睡眠阶段（总睡眠时间的百分比）、慢波活动以及快和慢纺锤波特征的改善的相关性。结果表明，在 Stage N2 睡眠较多和慢波睡眠较少的儿童中，清醒时的表现改善更为明显。在慢纺锤波密度更大、快纺锤波密度更小、持续时间更短和功率更低的儿童中，睡眠时的改善更为明显。这些发现表明，特定的睡眠脑电图特征反映了发育中大脑获取和改善综合规划和解决问题技能的能力。
