The Effects of Poor Quality Sleep on Brain Function and Risk Taking in Adolescence PDF

NIH Public Access Author Manuscript Neuroimage. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2014 May 01. Published in final edited form as: NIH-PA Author Manuscript Neuroimage. 2013 May 1; 71:. do...

NIH Public Access Author Manuscript Neuroimage. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2014 May 01. Published in final edited form as: NIH-PA Author Manuscript Neuroimage. 2013 May 1; 71:. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.01.025. The effects of poor quality sleep on brain function and risk taking in adolescence Eva H. Telzera,*, Andrew J. Fulignib,c, Matthew D. Liebermanb,c, and Adriana Galvánb,d aDepartment of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA bDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA cDepartment of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, USA dBrain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Abstract NIH-PA Author Manuscript Insufficient sleep and poor quality sleep are pervasive during adolescence and relate to impairments in cognitive control and increased risk taking. However, the neurobiology underlying the association between sleep and adolescent behavior remains elusive. In the current study, we examine how poor sleep quality relates to cognitive control and reward related brain function during risk taking. Forty-six adolescents participated in a functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) scan during which they completed a cognitive control and risk taking task. Behaviorally, adolescents who reported poorer sleep also exhibited greater risk-taking. This association was paralleled by less recruitment of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during cognitive control, greater insula activation during reward processing, and reduced functional coupling between the DLPFC and affective regions including the insula and ventral striatum during reward processing. Collectively, these results suggest that poor sleep may exaggerate the normative imbalance between affective and cognitive control systems, leading to greater risk-taking in adolescents. Keywords Adolescence; Sleep; Risk taking; Cognitive control; fMRI NIH-PA Author Manuscript Introduction Adolescence is a time of biological and social changes that greatly impact sleep and risk taking. Although good sleep is important at all stages of development, sleep may have particularly consequential effects on cognitive and affective functioning during adolescence, a developmental phase when insufficient and poor quality sleep is prevalent (Colrin and Baker, 2011; Dahl and Lewin, 2002). Poor sleep quality is related to a host of cognitive and emotional deficits, including a bias towards high risk behaviors, diminished attentional and behavioral control, and poor emotion regulation (Dahl, 1996; Harrison and Horne, 2000), © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: 603 East Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA. [email protected] (E.H. Telzer). The authors declare no competing financial interests. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.01.025.  Telzer et al. Page 2 making poor sleep a significant public health and developmental concern that may impact high risk behaviors during adolescence. Although neuroimaging research in adults has shown that sleep deprivation impacts brain function related to reward processing, risk- NIH-PA Author Manuscript taking, and cognition (Chee et al., 2011; Gujar et al., 2011; Libedinsky et al., 2011; Venkatraman et al., 2011), only a few developmental studies have examined how sleep influences reward-related brain function in adolescents (Hasler et al., 2012; Holm et al., 2009) and none have examined how sleep impacts risk taking behavior, cognitive control, and related neural circuitry. Given the dramatic increase in risk taking behavior, coupled with the rise in sleep deprivation, it is important to understand the underlying neural mechanisms by which sleep increases risk taking in adolescence. Sleep deprivation during adolescence occurs in tandem with normative developmental increases in risk-taking and poor decision making. For example, sleep-deprived adolescents and adolescents who report high levels of sleepiness show detriments in higher-level executive functioning, decreased cognitive modulation of drives, impulses, and emotions, and less effortful control of attention (Anderson et al., 2008; Beebe et al., 2008; Dahl, 1996). In terms of risky behavior, variability in weekend–weeknight sleep time and insufficient sleep (i.e.,