Adolescent Sleep Deprivation Affects Brain Development - Study

Tuesday 11th October 2011

A sleep study conducted on adolescent mice, shows that sleep deprived teenagers could be causing long term damage to their brain development. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers found that little sleep affects the synapses needed for communication. The deprivation of sleep also interfered with the balanced growth and depletion of brain synapses. This could have serious detrimental effects on brain development during the adolescent years. The teenage years are a very important time for brain development; it changes dramatically and is also an optimum time in your life for learning and retaining information.

In order to prepare itself for new learning experiences, the synaptic weakens during sleep, it was found in adult rodents that it becomes weaker and smaller during a sleeping period. When awake and learning the brain impulses strengthen the synaptic again. Scientists monitored the brain impulses for 8-10 hours using mice that were either sleeping, spontaneously awake or forced to stay awake.

They found that being awake and being asleep made a difference in the way that the brain cells received impulses from the other brain cells. Concluding that the time spent awake or asleep affects the formation and removal of synapses in the adolescent brain, if this happens in mild sleep deprivation, what effects will chronic sleep deprivation have on the formation? Many teenagers do experience this type of deprivation. Tests are still being carried out to see any other long term affects; it is possible that teenagers not getting enough sleep in their adolescent years could lead to long term mental health problems as an adult.

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