0212 Associations Between Sleep EEG and Report Card Grades in Mathematics in Adolescents

Introduction Academic success plays an important role in improving future lifetime opportunities. Numerous factors have been identified as being relevant to academic achievement, but the role played by sleep in this process has been largely under studied. Accumulating evidence indicates that healthy sleep has beneficial effects on academic success, but the brain mechanisms underlying the interplay between sleep and academic outcomes in adolescents are poorly understood. Sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) is tightly linked to structural and functional features of the central nervous system. EEG signals during NREM and REM sleep have been validated to be excellent noninvasive correlates of adolescents’ brain maturation. However, previous studies examining the associations between sleep and academic achievement were based on primarily subjective measures of sleep or actigraphy. Thus, it is not known if or how these associations are related to adolescents’ brain activity during the night. The objective of this study was to examine the association between sleep EEG and report card marks in Mathematics in healthy adolescents. Methods Sample of 40 adolescents (26 girls, 18 boys) between the ages of 12 to 15 years (M= 13.9; SD = 0.95) participated in the study. Sleep EEG was recorded using a single night of ambulatory sleep EEG monitoring with frontal derivations during the school week in the child’s home. The Sleep Profiler was used to evaluate sleep EEG through the measurement of ambulatory EEG recorded from three frontal sensors placed at approximately F7, F8 and Fpz; Automated sleep/wake scoring was performed using the Sleep Profiler system followed by visual analysis by an experienced pediatric sleep specialist. Report card grades were used to assess adolescents’ academic achievement in Mathematics for the current semester. Results Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that longer duration of N3 sleep was significantly associated with higher marks in Mathematics, above and beyond the contributions of age, gender, socioeconomic status and PSG-measured sleep duration. Conclusion Our findings suggest that longer duration of N3 sleep recorded in the home environment in healthy adolescents is positively associated with better grades in Mathematics. Support (if any)