S horter sleep and later bedtimes are linked to potentially harmful functional changes to parts of the brain important for coping with stress and controlling negative emotions, our recently published research found. And children in families with low economic resources are particularly at risk. We are neuroscientists who are passionate about reducing socioeconomic disparities in child development .
To better understand how socioeconomic disadvantage affects sleep health and brain development in children, we recruited 94 5- to 9-year-old children from socioeconomically diverse families living in New York. About 30% of the participating families had incomes below the U.S.
poverty threshold. We asked parents to report on their child’s sleep environment, the consistency of their family routines, and their child’s bedtime and wake-up time. We also had children complete a magnetic resonance imaging scan of their brains to analyze the size of a brain region called the amygdala and the strength of its connections with other regions of the brain.
The amygdala plays a critical role in processing emotions and the amount of negative emotion a person experiences. Adversity experienced early in life can affect how the amygdala works. We found that children in families with low economic resources were getting less sleep at night and going to sleep later compared with children in families with higher economic resources.
In turn, shorter sleep and going to sleep later were associated with .