Sleep duration during weekdays affects hippocampal gray matter volume in healthy children

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.072

NeuroImage

Volume 60, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 471-475

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.11.072 Get rights and content

Abstract

Sleep is essential for living beings, and sleep loss has been shown to affect hippocampal structure and function in rats by inhibiting cell proliferation and neurogenesis in this region of the brain. We aimed to analyze the correlation between sleep duration and the hippocampal volume using brain magnetic resonance images of 290 healthy children aged 5–18 years. We examined the volume of gray matter, white matter, and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) space in the brain using a fully automated and established neuroimaging technique, voxel-based morphometry, which enabled global analysis of brain structure without bias towards any specific brain region while permitting the identification of potential differences or abnormalities in brain structures. We found that the regional gray matter volume of the bilateral hippocampal body was significantly positively correlated with sleep duration during weekdays after adjusting for age, sex, and intracranial volume. Our results indicated that sleep duration affects the hippocampal regional gray matter volume of healthy children. These findings advance our understanding of the importance of sleep habits in the daily lives of healthy children.

Highlights

► Sleep duration was positively correlated with gray matter volume in children. ► Those correlations were found in the bilateral hippocampus. ► Those correlations were found in sleep duration during weekdays, not weekends.

Introduction

Although the function of sleep remains debatable, sleep has been associated with the function and structure of the hippocampus. For example, one major theory about the function of sleep proposes that memory consolidation occurs predominantly during sleep, when the hippocampus sends information from memory to the neocortex for permanent storage (Axmacher et al., 2009). Additionally, sleep deprivation was shown to reduce the proliferation of cells and to suppress neurogenesis in the hippocampus of rats (Guzman-Marin et al., 2003, Guzman-Marin et al., 2005). Even human patients with primary insomnia showed significant reductions in hippocampal volume (Riemann et al., 2007). Although the correlation between sleep and the hippocampus has been elucidated in studies on animals and on human patients and although the influence of chronic sleep loss on the cognition of healthy children has been examined (Jan et al., 2010), the correlation between sleep and the hippocampal volume of healthy children has not yet been clarified. Understanding the correlation between sleep and the hippocampus of children is especially important to identify the sleeping habits associated with the development of a healthy brain and sound cognition. Therefore, we aimed to analyze the correlation between sleep duration and the hippocampal gray matter volume using brain magnetic resonance images of 290 healthy children aged 5–18 years by applying voxel-based morphometry (VBM). This approach enabled global analysis of brain structure and without bias towards any specific brain region while permitting the identification of potential differences or abnormalities in brain structures (Ashburner and Friston, 2000). We hypothesized that there would be a significant positive correlation between sleep duration and the hippocampal gray matter volume in healthy children.

Section snippets

Participants

All subjects were healthy Japanese children and the detail of the recruitment is written elsewhere (Taki et al., 2010). Briefly, we collected brain MR images from 290 subjects (145 boys, 145 girls; age range, 5.6–18.4 years) who did not have any history of malignant tumors, head traumas with a loss of consciousness lasting over 5 min, developmental disorders, epilepsy, psychiatric diseases, or claustrophobia. We announced that only right-handed children can participate in this study in an

Results

We found that the volume of the bilateral hippocampal body was significantly positively correlated with the duration of sleep during weekdays after adjusting for age, sex, and intracranial volume and after performing small-volume correction of the hippocampal ROI (left: t = 3.59, p = 0.014, family-wise error, corrected; right: t = 3.81, p = 0.007, family-wise error, corrected), as shown in Fig. 2. The whole-brain analysis showed that the duration of sleep during weekdays was substantially positively

Discussion

We demonstrated that the regional gray matter volume of the bilateral hippocampus was significantly positively correlated with the duration of sleep during weekdays. Although the mechanisms underlying this significant positive correlation have not been clarified, the findings of several studies in rats and humans have supported these results. The generation of new neurons in dentate gyrus of the hippocampus has been confirmed in several mammals, including humans (Eriksson et al., 1998, Gould et

Acknowledgments

We thank Y. Yamada for collecting MR data, and Y. Suzuki for technical support. This work was supported by a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (grant number 20790875).

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Sleep duration during weekdays affects hippocampal gray matter volume in healthy children

Abstract

Highlights

Introduction

Section snippets

Participants

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgments

NeuroImage

NeuroImage

NeuroImage

NeuroImage

NeuroImage

Sleep Med. Rev.

NeuroImage

Neurosci. Lett.

Eur. J. Paediatr. Neurol.

NeuroImage

Neuropsychologia

NeuroImage

J. Adolesc. Health

Neuropsychologia

Trends Cogn. Sci.

Sleep Medicine Reviews

Am. J. Geriatr. Psychiatry

Memory processes during sleep: beyond the standard consolidation theory

Cell. Mol. Life Sci.

Japanese Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

Working memory: looking back and looking forward

Nat. Rev. Neurosci.