Simon Katharine C, Cadle Chelsea, Shuster Alessandra E, Malerba Paola
Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, USA.
Pulmonology Department, Children's Hospital of Orange County, Orange, USA.
Curr Sleep Med Rep. 2025;11(1):7. doi: 10.1007/s40675-025-00322-2. Epub 2025 Feb 5.
Sleep is dynamic across the lifespan, influenced by brain maturation, neurophysiology, hormones, and cognitive processes. Sleep behaviors influenced by physiological and external factors can also impact sleep health. As sleep plays a mechanistic role in health across the lifespan, understanding when and how to intervene to benefit health is essential.
Recent research has advanced our understanding of sleep across three domains: patterns, neurophysiology, and behaviors. Highlights include (1) Early childhood nap cessation is thought to relate to medial temporal lobe network maturation and underlie long-term hippocampal-dependent memory development. (2) Chronotype misalignment is a key factor in sleep deficits and social jetlag. (3) Older adult daytime sleep has complex effects on health, at times beneficial while others, potentially maladaptive. (4) Longitudinal sleep oscillation trajectories are starting to be investigated and indicate neurophysiology could be interpreted as indicative of brain maturation in development. (5) In adults, sleep quality and macrostructure trajectories show high variability, emphasizing distinctive traits in shaping sleep and its lifespan trajectories. (6) Neighborhood and socioeconomic factors influence sleep health across all ages. (7) In older adults, associations between loneliness and poor sleep are being unpacked.
This recent research, while comprehensively describing our current understanding of sleep trajectories across the lifespan, emphasizes the need to expand current approaches to longitudinal measurement studies that cross age-spans. Expanding will enhance our ability to mechanistically determine the temporal and causal relations between the multiple dimensions of sleep (i.e., patterns, behaviors, and physiology) and outcomes in sleep health.
睡眠在整个生命周期中是动态变化的，受大脑成熟、神经生理学、激素和认知过程的影响。受生理和外部因素影响的睡眠行为也会影响睡眠健康。由于睡眠在整个生命周期的健康中起着机制性作用，了解何时以及如何进行干预以促进健康至关重要。
最近的研究在三个领域推进了我们对睡眠的理解：模式、神经生理学和行为。重点包括：（1）幼儿期午睡停止被认为与内侧颞叶网络成熟有关，并构成长期海马体依赖性记忆发展的基础。（2）昼夜节律失调是睡眠不足和社会时差的关键因素。（3）老年人白天睡眠对健康有复杂影响，有时有益，有时可能具有适应不良性。（4）纵向睡眠振荡轨迹开始得到研究，表明神经生理学可被解释为发育中大脑成熟的指标。（5）在成年人中，睡眠质量和宏观结构轨迹显示出高度变异性，强调了塑造睡眠及其生命周期轨迹的独特特征。（6）邻里和社会经济因素影响各年龄段的睡眠健康。（7）在老年人中，孤独与睡眠不佳之间的关联正在得到剖析。
最近的这项研究虽然全面描述了我们目前对整个生命周期睡眠轨迹的理解，但强调需要扩展当前跨年龄跨度的纵向测量研究方法。扩展将增强我们从机制上确定睡眠的多个维度（即模式、行为和生理学）与睡眠健康结果之间的时间和因果关系的能力。
