Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, 4094 Campus Dr, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, 135 Hicks Way, Amherst, 01003, USA.
Sci Rep. 2020 Sep 17;10(1):15304. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-72231-z.
Previous research has established important developmental changes in sleep and memory during early childhood. These changes have been linked separately to brain development, yet few studies have explored their interrelations during this developmental period. The goal of this report was to explore these associations in 200 (100 female) typically developing 4- to 8-year-old children. We examined whether habitual sleep patterns (24-h sleep duration, nap status) were related to children's performance on a source memory task and hippocampal subfield volumes. Results revealed that, across all participants, after controlling for age, habitual sleep duration was positively related to source memory performance. In addition, in younger (4-6 years, n = 67), but not older (6-8 years, n = 70) children, habitual sleep duration was related to hippocampal head subfield volume (CA2-4/DG). Moreover, within younger children, volume of hippocampal subfields varied as a function of nap status; children who were still napping (n = 28) had larger CA1 volumes in the body compared to children who had transitioned out of napping (n = 39). Together, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that habitually napping children may have more immature cognitive networks, as indexed by hippocampal integrity. Furthermore, these results shed additional light on why sleep is important during early childhood, a period of substantial brain development.
先前的研究已经确定了儿童早期睡眠和记忆的重要发育变化。这些变化分别与大脑发育有关，但很少有研究探讨它们在这个发育阶段的相互关系。本报告的目的是在 200 名（100 名女性）典型的 4 至 8 岁儿童中探索这些关联。我们研究了习惯性的睡眠模式（24 小时睡眠时间、午睡状态）是否与儿童在源记忆任务中的表现和海马亚区体积有关。结果表明，在所有参与者中，在控制年龄后，习惯性睡眠时间与源记忆表现呈正相关。此外，在年龄较小的（4-6 岁，n=67）儿童中，但不在年龄较大的（6-8 岁，n=70）儿童中，习惯性睡眠时间与海马头部亚区体积（CA2-4/DG）有关。此外，在年龄较小的儿童中，海马亚区的体积随午睡状态的不同而变化；仍在午睡的儿童（n=28）与已经停止午睡的儿童（n=39）相比，其体部 CA1 体积更大。总的来说，这些发现与习惯性午睡的儿童可能具有更不成熟的认知网络的假设一致，这可以通过海马体的完整性来衡量。此外，这些结果进一步阐明了为什么睡眠在儿童早期，即大脑发育的重要阶段很重要。
