How does sleep

deprivation affect
the adolescent
brain?

Taylor Coleman
March 23, 2017
 Abstract

Sleep deprivation has been a growing issue that continues to affect our population, a lot

of that population being adolescents or young adults. Studies have shown the proper amount of

hours a person should get is roughly eight hours of sleep every night. While we are being told

that about eight hours of sleep is the adequate amount, nearly one-third of Americans are being

affected by the negative side effects of sleep deprivation. Adolescents have constant moodiness,

internal and external battles with themselves and others, want to sleep all day, make reckless

decisions, and have careless behaviors. This is how an adolescent is described, but what if these

are just the negative symptoms of constant sleep deprivation that society has decided to title as

the common or normal symptoms of being a teenager? Numerous studies have been made on

various groups of students around the world categorized mainly by age or location. What

researchers have found in these studies is sleep has been connected to brain function. It has been

shown that without the proper amount of sleep, people tend to experience sleepiness throughout

the day and are more likely to not be able to execute certain brain functions that help with overall

success in their performance. With the help of studies and research presented in articles, the topic

of how sleep deprivation affects the adolescent brain is explored.

Keyword(s): Adolescent, sleep deprivation

Introduction
 Sleeping is a basic human need and is a vital part of the foundation of good health and

well-being. One of the biggest issues for adolescents worldwide and continues to be so, is sleep

deprivation. As defined by an article from the Medical News Today, “What’s to Know About

Sleep Deprivation?,” sleep deprivation is defined as, “... when an individual gets less sleep than

they need to feel awake and alert.” The adequate amount of sleep for adults is about seven to

eight hours of sleep, for teens it is about eight to nine hours of sleep, and for children its about

nine or more hours. Most adolescents suffer from sleep deprivation with studies showing that 60-

70% of American adolescents live with a borderline to severe sleep debt. Sleep deprivation is

damaging to an adolescent not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. While there has

been numerous studies, linking sleep deprivation to people’s daytime performance and the topic

can be supported by this information, we can prompt the conclusion that sleep deprivation is

linked to, and can have negative impact on daytime performance and brain function.

The topic of how sleep deprivation affects the adolescent brain was chosen because of the

constant struggle the adolescent age group suffer all over the world, especially a big fraction of

that being Americans. It has been shown that sleep deprivation effects largely enough, the new

generation; students. Studies have shown that not even half of the adolescent population gets the

adequate amount of sleep, which can greatly affect their learning and thinking abilities. This may

bring up the question, “How does a population function to its full potential even without the

proper amount of sleep?” The real answer is, it doesn’t.

The topic was also chosen because of the very wide variety of side effects and diseases

that come from it. Sleep deprivation is a very broad topic and can branch out into many other
forms of other research topics. The topic of sleep deprivation in adolescents was decided because

so many people suffer from it, and so many people can relate to the research being taken place.

With this, it can be asked, “How does sleep deprivation affect the adolescent brain?”

Although conclusions to this topic have been obtained from different studies conducted around

the world involving adolescents, these studies provide statistical data and evidence that assure

the negative side effects sleep deprivation has on the adolescent brain and how well it performs.

Before reading these studies, I think it is appropriate to hypothesize that the adolescent brain can

and will be negatively affected by sleep deprivation.

As explained by “Sleep Deprivation,” an article by Jacquelin L. Lodge with Gale

Encyclopedia of Medicine, “Teenagers require an average of 9.25 hours of sleep per night for

brain development, health, and optimal performance.” Because sleep deprivation is a growing

cause worldwide, especially in adolescents, with more than fifty-percent of this population

suffering from the side effects of lack of sleep, we have increased the public knowledge of the

importance of sleep as well as the the recommended hours of sleep a person should get based on

their age.

It is common for people to be continuously awake for a sixteen hour period and be asleep

for approximately eight hours within a twenty-four hour period. Although we do not fully

understand the brain’s control of sleep and wakefulness, we have pinpointed many areas of the

brain that are involved in regulating processes and have studied them and have figured out their

functions. We have found that the the several areas in the brain, the brainstem and the
hypothalamus promote wakefulness by sending arousal signals to the cerebral cortex. The

cerebral cortex, which is the brain’s largest region. The name of these signals that are sent are

neurotransmitters. The TMN is an area of the brain that also promotes the arousal signals. The

name of the neurotransmitter released in this area is histamine. We know that the hypothalamus

is part of wakefulness but another area of the hypothalamus is in charge of shutting down the

brain’s arousal signals and causes us to sleep. The neurotransmitters in this action are VLPOs.

Rather than stimulating the arousal activity, the signals casted off from this neurotransmitter shut

down the arousal signals and cause sleep.

In addition to this, “ Prolonged wakefulness induces experiencedependent synaptic

plasticity in mouse hypocretin/orexin neurons,” an article by American Society for Clinical

Investigation, talks about the brain and its anatomy and physiology of each section. According to

the article, “Sleep is a natural process that allows mammals to preserve energy; it facilitates

development, and results in recuperation of the nervous system. It is still unclear how the central

nervous system responds to the increasing pressure resulting from the demand to keep awake

during compulsory or voluntary sleep loss. Neuronal changes are likely to be important for

overcoming the transition from the waking state to sleep but are also likely to contribute to the

well-documented effects of sleep loss on the mammalian brain.” To continue, it later talks about

the lateral hypothalamus part of the brain and how it is said to be a center responsible for arousal

and maintenance of wakefulness. It also talks about a specific group of neurons that express the

neuropeptide called hypocretin. Hypocretin is found in the lateral hypothalamus and promotes

wakefulness.
 “Why Are Teenagers So Sleep Deprived?”, an article by Juliann Garey, explains what

exactly is keeping teenagers up so late, with the leading factors being biology, technology, and

societal expectations. “Along with the more obvious hormonal changes that transform your child

into a teen, are shifts in the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone.” The change in

production of melatonin is part of the reason a teenager seems more awake at midnight rather

than throughout the day but, that is the normal circadian rhythm for people between the ages of

15-22 years old. This is basically saying, adolescents are in a different time-zone than adults. The

typical high school student’s time to fall asleep is around 11 P.M. or later. The problem is

worsened when adolescents try to make up for lost sleep on the weekends, sometimes sleeping

upwards of 12 hours on Friday and Saturday nights, which only further disrupts their sleep cycle.

In the same article, another factor in what is keeping teenagers up so late is technology.

“It’s not that just facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Youtube are distractions that keep

kids up later, it’s the actual light coming off the electronic devices they’re exposed to, especially

late at night.” Studies have shown that electronic devices give off a glow called blue light that

has a particular frequency. When this light hits receptors in the eye, those receptors send a signal

to the brain which suppresses the production of melatonin and keeps adolescents from getting

tired (Dr. Van Gilder). Dr. Van Gilder, a pediatrician in Manhattan, says he has seen adolescent

bed times pushed back an hour to an hour and a half over the year since adolescents started doing

homework on computers.

“Sleep problems among adolescents: is there a relation with deliberate self-harm and

aggression?,” an article by the Egyptian Journal of Psychiatry, conducts a study that is aimed to
examine the presence of a relationship between sleep problems and the development of

aggression and self-harm among adolescents. The study included a total of 117 adolescents (51

male adolescents [43.6%] and 66 female adolescents [56.4%]) in the preparatory stage that

participated. They each were given three self-report questionnaires, Child and Adolescent Sleep

Checklist, the Deliberate Self-Harm Inventory, and the Aggression Scale. After conducting the

study, they found that of the 117 adolescents that participated in this study, a total of 36 of those

adolescents had a score of 18 or more, and thus they were considered to have sleep problems.

Scores ranged from around 3 to 38 in the Aggression Scale with a mean of about 12.36. They

also found that a total of 24 of the adolescents had engaged in self-harm behavior. This study

also resulted in a significant positive correlation between sleep problems and deliberate self-

harm and there also had been a positive correlation between sleep problems and aggression

among these adolescents. Although this study has a small population to sample on, it still shows

evidence which suggests that total sleep time in adolescents tends to decrease and the timing of

sleep tends to be delayed; this pattern seems to be common among most high school students,

leading to an increase in daytime sleepiness and to a significant impact on daytime functioning

and academic achievement.

Another study that supports this idea is, “The Impact of School Daily Schedule on

Adolescent Sleep,” by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The study was initiated to examine

the impact of starting school on the adolescent sleep, to compare weekday and weekend sleep

times, and to attempt to normalize the timing of the circadian sleep / wake cycle by

administering bright light in the morning. Students had kept sleep diaries in August, September,

November, and February. The study started with sixty students that enrolled, but the sample size

was decreased to thirty-seven from August to September. In November and February, the sample
size for sleep was fifty-five and that for vigilance was fifty-six. The sample for the visual analog

scale in November was forty-two and that in February was forty-eight. All students that took

place in the study had been juniors or seniors that had enrolled in advanced-placement biology.

The mean sleep per night on weekdays in August was 8.7 hours, and decreased to 7 hours of

sleep per night on weekdays in September. Average bedtimes on weekends were 1 to 1.5 hours

after midnight and there had been no significant difference between the total minutes of sleep on

weekdays in August and weekends in September. However, total sleep on weekends in

September was thirty minutes longer than that on weekends in August.

Another article by the American Journal of Psychology, “ The Effect of Sleep Loss on

Dual Time-Based Prospective Memory Tasks,” talks about a study they conducted to deepen

their knowledge about the effect of a lower vigilance state on time-based prospective memory

(TBPM) performance. A time-based prospective memory performance is a type of prospective

memory in which remembrance is triggered by a time related cue that indicated that a given

action needs to be performed. In the study, two TBPM had taken place (primary and

interpolated) and three reasoning tasks, as ongoing activities, were administered after total sleep

deprivation and in a regular sleep condition. Fifty university students (25 men and 25 women)

took part in the study as volunteers. All had to meet the following expectations; Italian native

speakers, right-handed, never been diagnosed with a mental disorder, particularly absence of

depressive symptoms tested with the Beck Depression Inventory, good sleep quality,

intermediate chronotype, regular sleeping habits, no drug or medication use that may affect

cognition, no traveling across time zones three months before the study, and not engaged in shift

work during the past six months preceding the study. After getting the results, the study found
that participants who underwent the total sleep deprivation showed and slower mean response

time, a slower slowest 10% of response time, and more lapses compared with participants who

had had a regular nights sleep. Also, with regard to subjective vigilance, the vigilance level was

significantly lower in sleep-deprived participants in comparison with volunteers who had a

regular nights sleep. These results showed the the manipulation of total sleep deprivation was

effective. The participants who took place in the total sleep deprivation part of the study showed

a lower objective and subjective vigilance than the control group that had gotten a regular

amount of sleep.

With this new information, it is appropriate to conclude that sleep deprivation has a

negative effect on the adolescent brain. Studies have been made among adolescents of various

groups, from different ethnicities to various ages ranging from around thirteen to early twenties.

Many of these studies have proven that a lack of sleep does contribute to negative side effects in

the brain and contributes to poor everyday performance. According to webmd.com, “...some

solutions to avoiding sleep deprivation include, avoiding watching TV, eating, minimizing noise,

light, and temperature extremes during sleep, try not to drink fluids after 8 p.m., avoid naps, do

not expose yourself to bright light, avoid nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, and light snacks.” It is

important that we recognize sleep deprivation as a crucial issue, for it is now known that it has

negative side effects to the brain.