Effects of Nighttime Sleep Characteristics on Function of Attention Network in Young Children.

It is well known that the characteristics of nighttime sleep is strongly linked to cognitive abilities in daytime. However, studies investigating the influence of poor-sleep characteristics on pre-adolescent children's cognitive abilities are relatively few. The present study aimed at investigating the influence of night-time sleep characteristics on pre-adolescent children's cognitive abilities by utilizing objective indicators. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the relation between attentional control ability meas- ured by standardized behavioral task and nighttime sleep characteristics quantified by actigraph measurement. The results re- vealed a significant correlation between ability of executive attention and total sleep time, i.e. total length of uninterrupted sleep. To be more specific, focal attention of children with long total sleep time was more easily distracted by goal-irrelevant information than that of children with short total sleep time, which indicates that sub-component of attentional control subserved by prefrontal cortex is particularly susceptive to sleep characteristics. The implication of this findings are discussed in the context of previous studies on the relation between children's nighttime sleep characteristics and their cognitive func- tions. ACTA MEDICA NAGASAKIENSIA 57: 85-91, 2012