Sleep disturbances and insomnia are highly prevalent in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Sleep homeostasis, a fundamental mechanism of sleep regulation that generates pressure to sleep as a function of wakefulness, has not been studied in children with ASD so far, and its potential contribution to their sleep disturbances remains unknown. Here, we examined whether slow-wave activity (SWA), a measure that is indicative of sleep pressure, differs in children with ASD.

Memory (M) impairments have been suggested in pediatric Obstructive Sleep Apnea along with attention and executive (AE), language (L), and visuospatial (V) dysfunctions. NEPSY assessment of children aged 5-9 years who were either healthy.

The aim of this study was to assess risk factors for excessive autonomic activation during sleep (EAAS) and its association with sleep problems, impaired behavior, and poor academic performance in primary school children.

Behavioural sleep disturbances are common among children with Down syndrome (DS). However, tools used to detect and evaluate behavioural sleep disturbances were developed for typically developing children and have not been evaluated for use among children with DS. The current study evaluates the psychometric properties of three measures of behavioural sleep disturbances that are currently being used with children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including children with DS.

Two sources of information (parent-reported sleep diaries and actigraph records) were used to investigate how toddler sleep characteristics (bed time/sleep onset, wake time/sleep offset, total nighttime sleep, and total sleep time) are related to sleep problems and temperament. There were 64 toddler participants in the study. Consistent with studies of older children, parent reports differed from actigraph-based records.

This was a cross-sectional pilot study performed at an academic medical center in 37 severely obese (body mass index [BMI] >97th percentile) adolescents. Study evaluations included polysomnography, BMI, waist circumference, and standardized neurocognitive tests to assess memory, executive functioning, psychomotor efficiency, academic achievement, and an approximation of full-scale IQ. Outcome data were evaluated categorically, based on clinical criteria for the diagnosis of OSA, and continuously to quantify associations between sleep parameters, anthropometrics, and neurocognitive test results.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects 2-5% of all children and is associated with cognitive and behavioral deficits, resulting in poor school performance. These psychological deficits may arise from brain injury, as seen in preliminary findings of lower gray matter volume among pediatric OSA patients. However, the psychological deficits in OSA are closely related to functions in the cortex, and such brain areas have not been specifically assessed. The objective was to determine whether cortical thickness, a marker of possible brain injury, is altered in children with OSA.

We reported earlier that overnight change in explicit memory is positively related to the change in sleep spindle activity (between a control and a learning night). However, it remained unclear whether this effect was restricted to good memory performers and whether a general association of sleep spindles and a “sleep-related learning trait” may not account for this effect. Here we now present a secondary and more detailed analysis of our randomized multicenter study. Subjects were studied over a 4-week study period (including actigraphy and daily sleep diaries), including three overnight stays in the sleep laboratory. In the course of the study, subjects completed test-batteries of memory (Wechsler-Memory-Scale-revised; WMS) and other cognitive abilities (Raven’s Advanced-Progressive-Matrices; APM) and were asked to study 160 word pairs in the evening before being tested by cued-recall. Afterwards, subjects went to bed in the laboratory with full polysomnographic montages.

Substantial research attention has been devoted to understanding the importance and impact of sleep in children and adolescents. Traditionally, this has focused on mean sleep variables (e.g., a child’s “typical” or average sleep duration), yet research increasingly suggests that intraindividual variability (IIV) of sleep/wake patterns (sometimes referred to as sleep variability or night-to-night variability) regularly occurs and may have implications for adjustment. A systematic search of five electronic databases identified 52 empirical studies published between 2000 and 2015 that examined correlates of sleep IIV in children and adolescents, with a recent increase in the publication rate of such studies.

To determine whether individual differences in developmental patterns of general sleep problems are associated with 3 executive function abilities-inhibiting, updating working memory, and task shifting-in late adolescence.