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Evening and morning exhaled volatile compound patterns are different in OSA. This might affect the ability of electronic noses to identify this disorder. Overnight alterations in volatile substances need to be taken into account during exhaled breath measurements in OSA.

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A large amount of studies have investigated the association between sleep and memory systems. However, remarkably little is known of the effect of sleep disorders on declarative and nondeclarative memory for children. In the present study we examined the effects of sleep disorders on different aspects of memory functions by testing children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), which is characterized by disrupted sleep patterns. We used "The War of the Ghosts" test to measure declarative memory and the Alternating Serial Reaction Time (ASRT) task. This enabled us to measure two aspects of nondeclarative memory--general skill learning and sequence-specific learning--separately. Ten children with SDB and 10 healthy controls participated in this study. Our data showed dissociation between declarative and nondeclarative memory in children with SDB. They showed impaired declarative memory, while the sequence-specific and general skill learning was similar to that of healthy controls, in spite of sleep disruption. Our findings suggest that sleep-disordered breathing affects declarative and nondeclarative memory differently in children. Moreover, these findings imply that the disrupted sleep pattern influences the more attention-demanding and cortical structure-guided explicit processes, while the less attention-demanding implicit processes mediated by subcortical structures are preserved.

Healthy sleep is essential in children’s cognitive, behavioral, and emotional development. However, remarkably little is known about the influence of sleep disorders on different memory processes in childhood. Such data could give us a deeper insight into the effect of sleep on the developing brain and memory functions and how the relationship between sleep and memory changes from childhood to adulthood. In the present study we examined the effect of sleep disorder on declarative and non-declarative memory consolidation by testing children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) which is characterized by disrupted sleep structure. We used a story recall task to measure declarative memory and Alternating Serial Reaction time (ASRT) task to assess non-declarative memory. This task enables us to measure two aspects of non-declarative memory, namely general motor skill learning and sequence-specific learning. There were two sessions: a learning phase and a testing phase, separated by a 12 h offline period with sleep. Our data showed that children with SDB exhibited a generally lower declarative memory performance both in the learning and testing phase; however, both the SDB and control groups exhibited retention of the previously recalled items after the offline period. Here we showed intact non-declarative consolidation in SDB group in both sequence-specific and general motor skill. These findings suggest that sleep disorders in childhood have a differential effect on different memory processes (online vs. offline) and give us insight into how sleep disturbances affects developing brain.