Sleep spindles and intelligence in early childhood–developmental and trait-dependent aspects.

Ujma, Péter P.; Sándor, Piroska; Szakadát, Sára; Gombos, Ferenc; Bódizs, Róbert

doi:10.1037/dev0000233

Cited by 50 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…with an IQ within the normal range). In particular, sleep spindle activity seems to be positively correlated with IQ measures (Hoedlmoser et al., ; Reynolds, Short, & Gradisar, ; Ujma, Sándor, Szakadát, Gombos, & Bódizs, ). Consistent with these findings in typically developing children, spindle density was found to be reduced in a larger sample of children with ASD also including low‐functioning ASD (Farmer et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signs of enhanced formation of gist memory in children with autism spectrum disorder – a study of memory functions of sleep

Kurz

Conzelmann²,

Barth³

et al. 2019

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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BackgroundAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired cognitive and social skills, including emotional dysregulation, and symptoms have been suspected to partly arise from impaired formation of memory representations regulating these behaviours. Sleep, which is subjectively impaired in ASD, is critical for forming long‐term memories and abstracted gist‐based representations. We expected a generally reduced memory benefit from sleep in children with ASD, and a diminished enhancement of gist representations, in particular.MethodsWe compared effects of sleep on memory consolidation between boys (9–12 years) with ASD (n = 21) and typically developing (TD, n = 20) boys, matched for age and IQ, in a within‐subjects crossover design. We employed an emotional picture recognition task and the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word list task for assessing gist memory formation in the emotional and nonemotional domain, respectively. Learning took place before retention intervals of nocturnal sleep and daytime wakefulness, and retrieval was tested afterwards.ResultsSurprisingly, on the DRM task, children with ASD showed an enhanced sleep‐dependent formation of gist‐based memory (i.e. more recall of ‘critical lure words’ after sleep compared to wakefulness) than TD children, with this effect occurring on top of a diminished veridical word memory. On the picture recognition task, children with ASD also showed a stronger emotional enhancement in memory (i.e. relatively better memory for negative than neutral pictures) than TD children, with this enhancement occurring independent of sleep. Sleep polysomnography was remarkably comparable between groups.ConclusionsChildren with ASD show well‐preserved sleep‐dependent memory consolidation. Enhanced gist memory formation in these children might reflect a compensatory response for impairments at earlier stages of memory processing, that is during encoding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signs of enhanced formation of gist memory in children with autism spectrum disorder – a study of memory functions of sleep

Kurz

Conzelmann²,

Barth³

et al. 2019

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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“…Similarly lower spindle frequency was related to better reasoning and working memory in school‐aged children, a result that is in contrast to studies of adult populations (Chatburn et al., ; Gruber et al., ). In both adolescents (15–22 years) and children (4–8 years), fast spindle amplitude was positively correlated with fluid intelligence (Bodizs, Gombos, Ujma, & Kovacs, ; Ujma, Sandor, Szakadat, Gombos, & Bodizs, ). Intelligence scores are generally normalized based on age and therefore do not change across aging.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intelligence scores are generally normalized based on age and therefore do not change across aging. However, cognitive performance measured by raw scores markedly increases from childhood to adulthood (Ujma et al., ). As sleep spindles also change profoundly during that time, we hypothesize that they could provide a biological model for the development of cognitive abilities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental changes of sleep spindles and their impact on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities: A longitudinal approach

Hahn

Joechner

Roell

et al. 2018

Developmental Science

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Sleep spindles are related to sleep-dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities. However, they undergo drastic maturational changes during adolescence. Here we used a longitudinal approach (across 7 years) to explore whether developmental changes in sleep spindle density can explain individual differences in sleep-dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities. Ambulatory polysomnography was recorded during four nights in 34 healthy subjects (24 female) with two nights (baseline and experimental) at initial recording (age range 8-11 years) and two nights at follow-up recording (age range 14-18 years). For declarative learning, participants encoded word pairs with a subsequent recall before and after sleep. General cognitive abilities were measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale. Higher slow (11-13 Hz) than fast (13-15 Hz) spindle density at frontal, central, and parietal sites during initial recordings, followed by a shift to higher fast than slow spindle density at central and parietal sites during follow-up recordings, suggest that mature spindle topography develops throughout adolescence. Fast spindle density increases from baseline to experimental night were positively related to sleep-dependent memory consolidation. In addition, we found that the development of fast spindles predicted the improvement in memory consolidation across the two longitudinal measurements, a finding that underlines a crucial role for mature fast spindles for sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Furthermore, slow spindle changes across adolescence were related to general cognitive abilities, a relationship that could indicate the maturation of frontal networks relevant for efficient cognitive processing.

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“…They have been related to learning efficiency (Schabus et al, 2006), general cognitive ability/intelligence (Bodizs et al, 2005;Bodizs, Gombos, Ujma, & Kovacs, 2014;Lustenberger, Maric, Durr, Achermann, & Huber, 2012;Schabus et al, 2006;Ujma et al, 2014) and sleep-dependent improvement in memory performance (Clemens, Fabo, & Halasz, 2005Gais, Molle, Helms, & Born, 2002;Schabus et al, 2004;Tamminen, Payne, Stickgold, Wamsley, & Gaskell, 2010) in adults. However, their importance is still not clear especially for children, as some measures of sleep spindles (e.g., peak frequency) show a negative association, while others (e.g., sigma power, number of fast spindles, spindle activity of slow spindles) correlate positively with intelligence (Chatburn et al, 2013;Geiger et al, 2011;Hoedlmoser et al, 2014;Ujma, Sandor, Szakadat, Gombos, & Bodizs, 2016). Only two studies have investigated the relationship between learning and sleep spindles in younger children, one in 9-12-month-old infants (Friedrich et al, 2015) and one in 3-5-year-old preschoolers (Kurdziel et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory in 3‐month‐old infants benefits from a short nap

Horváth

Hannon

Ujma

et al. 2017

Developmental Science

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A broad range of studies demonstrate that sleep has a facilitating role in memory consolidation (see Rasch & Born, ). Whether sleep-dependent memory consolidation is also apparent in infants in their first few months of life has not been investigated. We demonstrate that 3-month-old infants only remember a cartoon face approximately 1.5-2 hours after its first presentation when a period of sleep followed learning. Furthermore, habituation time, that is, the time to become bored with a stimulus shown repetitively, correlated negatively with the density of infant sleep spindles, implying that processing speed is linked to specific electroencephalographic components of sleep. Our findings show that without a short period of sleep infants have problems remembering a newly seen face, that sleep enhances memory consolidation from a very early age, highlighting the importance of napping in infancy, and that infant sleep spindles may be associated with some aspects of cognitive ability.

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Sleep spindles and intelligence in early childhood–developmental and trait-dependent aspects.

Cited by 50 publications

References 55 publications

Signs of enhanced formation of gist memory in children with autism spectrum disorder – a study of memory functions of sleep

Signs of enhanced formation of gist memory in children with autism spectrum disorder – a study of memory functions of sleep

Developmental changes of sleep spindles and their impact on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation and general cognitive abilities: A longitudinal approach

Memory in 3‐month‐old infants benefits from a short nap

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