Sleeping to Dream, Develop, and Resist Decline

Abstract

Sleep quality is increasingly recognized as a potential factor influencing healthy cognitive and neural development across the lifespan. It is becoming more recognized as an important factor for persons with Down syndrome, and this chapter describes the most recent literature regarding sleep disturbance, its correlates, and findings from animal models in this population. The authors discuss the relation of poor sleep to behavioral, brain, and cognitive dysfunction and highlight the family consequences for altered sleep in children with Down syndrome. These pervasive sleep deficits have the potential to derail cognitive development during critical periods for language learning and could also exacerbate age-related cognitive decline. The authors hope that this compilation of evidence regarding sleep deficits in persons with Down syndrome will help facilitate more treatment studies for sleep disorders in this population, including treatments aimed at poor sleep in infants, as well as mid-adulthood, which may lessen or delay the impact of the pathological progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Methodological challenges to sleep research are discussed, and future directions for this field are highlighted.