Study reveals how more sleep can reduce impulsive behavior in children

Georgia (US), August 29 (ANI): Sleep is a vital aspect of a child’s overall health, but it can also influence their behavior.

Getting enough sleep can help children cope with the consequences of a stressful environment, according to a new study from the Youth Development Institute at the University of Georgia.

“Stressful environments have been shown to cause adolescents to seek immediate rewards rather than delayed rewards, but there are also adolescents who are in stressful environments and are not impulsive,” said the lead author. Linhao Zhang, fourth-year doctoral student at the College of Family and UGA. Consumer sciences. “We looked at what explains this link and what makes some people different from others. One mechanism we discovered is sleep.

Researchers looked at data from the Adolescent Cognitive Brain Development Study, which included 11,858 children ages 9 to 10, and found that a lack of sleep and long sleep latency (the amount of time needed to fall asleep) had a substantial association with impulsive behaviors. later in life.

Sleep problems, such as sleep latency (the time it takes an individual to fall asleep) and impulsive behaviors, were checked at multiple time points over a two-year period. When children slept less than the recommended nine hours or took more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, there was a strong link with impulsive behaviors later. Some of these behaviors included acting without a plan, thrill or sensation seeking, and lack of persistence.

However, sleep was a mediator between these actions, and when sleep problems were absent during the study, impulsivity was also less likely to be observed in the future.

Neurological hyperconnectivity, in which adolescents’ brains remain highly active even when they are not actively engaged in tasks, also played a role, Zhang said. This study focused on the default mode network, a brain network linked to goal-directed behaviors. When this network was overactive at rest, it could exacerbate the link between stressful environments, sleep and impulsivity. This link could be related to ADHD, which Zhang would like to explore in future studies.

“We can look at the default mode network and emotional regulation regions,” Zhang said. “It’s also possible that this hyperactivity and ADHD are strongly correlated, so in a future study we could test this in a more clinical setting.” This could have big implications for intervention or counseling programs.

These findings not only highlight the role of sleep in cognitive and behavioral development, but could also inform low-cost interventions to facilitate the psychological development of children facing stressors at home, Zhang said.

“If you want to develop interventions for people living in stressful environments, it’s very expensive and sometimes requires generational work to change,” Zhang said. “Sleep is a modifiable behavior, however, and these changes can be cost-effective.”

Zhang said too little sleep can be a problem even outside of stressful environments. For example, adolescents often have a circadian rhythm that prompts them to stay up later and sleep late, but early school start times and late nights doing homework can disrupt this rhythm.

“Many adolescents do not have enough time to sleep and are sleep deprived,” Zhang said. “This study shows why it’s important to promote longer sleep duration by delaying school start times or establishing routines so adolescents know, ‘OK, after this event, I’m going to bed.'”

Establishing these routines, regardless of the environment, can create healthier habits and reduce the time it takes to fall asleep. It’s also essential to act early when developing sleep habits, Zhang said.

“For people living in deprived environments, if we can provide strategies that help with sleep, it can have a positive impact, particularly for adolescents who are at such a critical stage of development for their brain development. ” (ANI)

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