Differential and interacting effects of age and sleep restriction on daytime sleepiness and vigilance in adolescence: a longitudinal study

Abstract

Study objectives: There is contradictory evidence on whether sleep need decreases across adolescence. We investigated this question longitudinally with a dose-response design to test the effects of varied sleep durations on daytime sleepiness and on vigilance and to test whether these relations change with age across early and mid-adolescence.

Methods: Data from 76 participants who completed at least 2 years of the 3-year study are included in this report. Annually, participants ranging in age from 9.8 to 16.2 years completed three different time in bed (TIB) schedules each consisting of four consecutive nights of 7, 8.5, or 10 hours. Daytime sleepiness (multiple sleep latency test [MSLT]) and vigilance (psychomotor vigilance test [PVT]) were measured on the day following the fourth night of each TIB schedule.

Results: Electroencephalogram (EEG)-measured sleep durations changed linearly with TIB. MSLT-measured daytime sleepiness decreased with longer TIB and increased with age. The TIB and age effects interacted such that the TIB effect decreased with age. PVT performance improved with longer TIB and improved with age, but the benefit that increased TIB conferred on PVT performance did not change with age.

Conclusions: These results seem paradoxical because daytime sleepiness increased but vigilance improved with age. The significant age effect on the relation between TIB and sleepiness compared to the lack of an age effect on the relation between TIB and vigilance performance suggests different rates of maturation in underlying brain systems. We interpret these findings in relation to our model of adolescent brain development driven by synaptic elimination.

Figure 1.

Average (±SE) total sleep duration (TST) plotted against participant age for the three TIB conditions (10, 8.5, and 7 hours). Data are averaged for five age groups: <11.5 (n = 27), 11.5–12.5 (n = 43), 12.5–13.5 (n = 46), 13.5–14.5 (n = 53), and >14.5 years (n = 48).

Figure 2.

MSLT sleep propensity for the three TIB conditions for the youngest third of participants (A) in the first year of the study (n = 25) and the oldest third of participants (B) in the third year of the study (n = 21). The percentage of subjects asleep is plotted against the 20 minutes of the MSLT. Data for the four daily MSLTs are pooled.

Figure 3.

Mean (±SE) log signal-to-noise ratio (LSNR), a measure of PVT performance, plotted (A) versus TIB, (B) versus age, and (C) versus age for the three TIB conditions.