Friday, June 02, 2023

Sleep loss moderates link between youth impulsivity and mature-rated media usage

Sleep is essential for mental health, mood regulation, and healthy behavior in adolescents

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF SLEEP MEDICINE

DARIEN, IL – A new study to be presented at the SLEEP 2023 annual meeting found that objectively measured short sleep duration partially moderates the association between impulsivity and mature-rated media usage in early adolescents.

Results show that higher impulsivity was predictive for more R-rated movie watching, and shorter sleep duration was predictive for more mature video gaming and R-rated movie watching one year later. Only 19% of participants slept more than 8 hours on average. Structural equation modeling found that sleep duration moderates the association between impulsivity and R-rated movie watching after controlling for bedtime screen use, parental monitoring, and demographic covariates.

“We found that impulsive adolescents with shorter sleep duration are more likely to be exposed to R-rated content,” said lead author Linhao Zhang, who is a doctoral student in the department of human development and family science at the University of Georgia in Athens.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children 6 to 12 years of age should sleep 9 to 12 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health. Teens should sleep 8 to 10 hours on a regular basis.

The three-year longitudinal study involved 2,757 early adolescents between the ages of 9 and 13 years; 50.7% were male. Their average age at the three-year follow-up was 12.9 years. Participants wore a Fitbit watch for at least seven days at the two-year follow-up to provide an objective estimate of sleep duration. They completed a questionnaire about impulsivity at the two-year follow-up, and questionnaires about R-rated movie watching and mature video gaming at both the two-year and three-year follow-up.

According to the authors, exposure to mature-rated media in youth is associated with decreased empathy and aggressive behaviors later in life. Shorter sleep duration is associated with decreased emotional regulation and attention span, making it a potential target to improve mental health, mood, and behavior in teens.

“Our results show that sleep duration may be a modifiable factor for prevention and intervention efforts, especially in adolescents at higher risk for excessive mature-rated media usage,” said Zhang.

The study involved a collaboration between research teams at the University of Georgia — led by Assaf Oshri, who has a doctorate in developmental psychology — and SRI International, led by postdoctoral fellow Orsolya Kiss. The study was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and will be presented Tuesday, June 6, during SLEEP 2023 in Indianapolis. SLEEP is the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, a joint venture of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.

 

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Abstract Title: Sleep duration moderates the link between youth impulsivity and mature-rated media usage one year later

Abstract ID: 0214 Poster Presentation Date: Tuesday, June 6, 12 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. EDT, Board 25

Presenter: Linhao Zhang

 

For a copy of the abstract or to arrange an interview with the study author or a sleep expert, please send an email to media@aasm.org.

 

About the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC

The APSS is a joint venture of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. The APSS organizes the SLEEP annual meeting each June (sleepmeeting.org).

About the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Established in 1975, the AASM advances sleep care and enhances sleep health to improve lives. The AASM has a combined membership of 12,000 accredited sleep centers and individuals, including physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who care for patients with sleep disorders. As the leader in the sleep field, the AASM sets standards and promotes excellence in sleep medicine health care, education and research (aasm.org).

About the Sleep Research Society

The SRS is a professional membership society that advances sleep and circadian science. The SRS provides forums for the exchange of information, establishes and maintains standards of reporting and classifies data in the field of sleep research, and collaborates with other organizations to foster scientific investigation on sleep and its disorders. The SRS also publishes the peer-reviewed, scientific journals Sleep and Sleep Advances (sleepresearchsociety.org).

Deep-brain stimulation during sleep

strengthens memory

Researchers also report first direct evidence supporting main theory for how human memory is consolidated during sleep

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES HEALTH SCIENCES

While it’s known that sleep plays a crucial role in strengthening memory, scientists are still trying to decode how this process plays out in the brain overnight. 

New research led by scientists at UCLA Health and Tel Aviv University provides the first physiological evidence from inside the human brain supporting the dominant scientific theory on how the brain consolidates memory during sleep. Further, the researchers found that targeted deep-brain stimulation during a critical time in the sleep cycle appeared to improve memory consolidation. 

The research, published June 1 in Nature Neuroscience, could offer new clues for how deep-brain stimulation during sleep could one day help patients with memory disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, said study co-author Itzhak Fried, MD, PhD. This was achieved by a novel “closed-loop” system that delivered electrical pulses in one brain region precisely synchronized to brain activity recorded from another region. 

According to the dominant theory for how the brain converts new information into long-term memories during shuteye, there’s an overnight dialogue between the hippocampus – the brain’s memory hub – and the cerebral cortex, which is associated with higher brain functions like reasoning and planning. This occurs during a phase of deep sleep, when brain waves are especially slow and neurons across brain regions alternate between rapidly firing in sync and silence. 

“This provides the first major evidence down to the level of single neurons that there is indeed this mechanism of interaction between the memory hub and the entire cortex,” said Fried, the director of epilepsy surgery at UCLA Health and professor of neurosurgery, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “It has both scientific value in terms of understanding how memory works in humans and using that knowledge to really boost memory.” 

The researchers had a unique opportunity to test this theory of memory consolidation via electrodes in the brains of 18 epilepsy patients at UCLA Health. The electrodes had been implanted in the patients’ brains to help identify the source of their seizures during hospital stays typically lasting around 10 days.  

The study was conducted across two nights and mornings. Just before bedtime, study participants were shown photo pairings of animals and 25 celebrities, including easily identifiable stars like Marilyn Monroe and Jack Nicholson. They were immediately tested on their ability to recall which celebrity was paired with which animal, and they were tested again in the morning after a night of undisturbed sleep. 

On another night, they were shown 25 new animal and celebrity pairings before bedtime. This time, they received targeted electrical stimulation overnight, and their ability recall the pairings was tested in the morning. To deliver this electrical stimulation, the researchers had created a real-time closed-loop system that Fried likened to a musical conductor: The system “listened” to brain’s electrical signals, and when patients fell into the period of deep sleep associated with memory consolidation, it delivered gentle electrical pulses instructing the rapidly firing neurons to “play” in sync.  

Each individual tested performed better on memory tests following a night of sleep with the electrical stimulation compared to a night of undisturbed sleep. Key electrophysiological markers also indicated that information was flowing between the hippocampus and throughout the cortex, providing physical evidence supporting of memory consolidation. 

“We found we basically enhanced this highway by which information flows to more permanent storage places in the brain,” Fried said. 

Fried in 2012 authored a New England Journal of Medicine study that for the first time showed that electrical stimulation can strengthen memory, and his work has continued to explore how deep brain stimulation could improve memory, now moving into the critical stage of sleep. He recently received a $7 million NIH grant to study whether artificial intelligence can help pinpoint and strengthen specific memories in the brain. 

“In our new study, we showed we can enhance memory in general,” Fried said. “Our next challenge is whether we have the ability to modulate specific memories.” 

Yuval Nir of Tel Aviv University co-supervised the study with Fried. Other authors include lead author Maya Geva-Sagiv, as well as Emily Mankin, Dawn Eliashiv, Natalie Cherry, Guldamla Kalender and Natalia Tchemodanov from UCLA, and Shdema Epstein from Tel-Aviv University.

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