Getting a Good Night's Sleep: Associations Between Sleep Duration and Parent-Reported Sleep Quality on Default Mode Network Connectivity in Youth

Abstract

Purpose: Sleep plays an important role in healthy neurocognitive development, and poor sleep is linked to cognitive and emotional dysfunction. Studies in adults suggest that shorter sleep duration and poor sleep quality may disrupt core neurocognitive networks, particularly the default mode network (DMN)-a network implicated in internal cognitive processing and rumination. Here, we examine the relationships between sleep and within- and between-network resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) of the DMN in youth.

Methods: This study included 3,798 youth (11.9 ± 0.6 years, 47.5% female) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development cohort. Sleep duration and wake after sleep onset (WASO) were quantified using Fitbit watch recordings, and parent-reported sleep disturbances were measured using the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children. We focused on rs-FC between the DMN and anticorrelated networks (i.e., dorsal attention network [DAN], frontoparietal network, salience network).

Results: Both shorter sleep duration and greater sleep disturbances were associated with weaker within-network DMN rs-FC. Shorter sleep duration was also associated with weaker anticorrelation (i.e., higher rs-FC) between the DMN and two anticorrelated networks: the DAN and frontoparietal network. Greater WASO was also associated with DMN-DAN rs-FC, and the effects of WASO on rs-FC were most pronounced among children who slept fewer hours/night.

Discussion: Together, these data suggest that different aspects of sleep are associated with distinct and interactive alterations in resting-state brain networks. Alterations in core neurocognitive networks may confer increased risk for emotional psychopathology and attention-related vulnerabilities. Our findings contribute to the growing number of studies demonstrating the importance of healthy sleep practices in youth.

Keywords: Default mode network; Dorsal attention network; Frontoparietal network; Resting-state functional connectivity; Salience network; Sleep disturbances.

Figure 1:

Four neurocognitive networks of interest; default mode network (DMN), dorsal attention network (DAN), frontoparietal network (FPN), and salience network (SN).

Figure 2:. Distribution of sleep-related variables across the sample with outliers removed.

A) Negative association between age and sleep duration. Shaded green regions represent recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (9 to 12 hours for children between 6 to 12 years of age; 8 to 10 hours for children between 13 to 18 years of age). B) Negative association between age and wake after sleep onset (WASO). C) Histogram showing distribution of total sleep disturbance scores across the sample with higher numbers indicating greater disturbances. Of note, 26.5% of participants had scores above 39, indicated by the vertical line, which may indicate significant sleep disturbances. *p<.05. Abbreviations: SDS=Sleep Disturbance Score.

Figure 3:. Effects of sleep duration, wake after sleep onset (WASO), and parent-reported sleep disturbance on within and between DMN rs-FC.

Shaded regions represent one standard deviation above or below the line of best fit, for display purposes. Abbreviations: DMN=Default mode network, DAN=Dorsal attention network, FPN=Frontoparietal network, rs-FC=resting-state functional connectivity. *p<0.05, regression. Shaded regions represent one standard deviation above or below the line of best fit, for display purposes. Abbreviations: DMN=Default mode network, FPN=Frontoparietal network, rs-FC=resting-state functional connectivity. *p<0.05, regression.