ArticleJournal of affective disorders2020
Sleep spindle density is associated with worry in children with generalized anxiety disorder and healthy controls.
Article in Journal of affective disorders, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association of Sleep Spindle Activity With Cognitive Decline in Early Clinical Stages of Alzheimer Disease.Neurology · 2026Article
- Article
- The benefits of sharing house-tree-fire-water-person drawings with parents when their anxious child is in sandplay therapy.Psychology and psychotherapy · 2025Article
- Attentional Control Accounts for the Association Between Anxiety Sensitivity and Sleep Efficiency in Clinic-Referred Youth.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Article
- The role of sleep disturbances in the onset and maintenance of psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence: A review of subjective and polysomnographic findings.Current sleep medicine reports · 2024Article
- Sleep to Internalizing Pathway in Young Adolescents (SIPYA): A proposed neurodevelopmental model.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Review
- Spindle-related brain activation in patients with insomnia disorder: An EEG-fMRI study.Brain imaging and behavior · 2022Article
- Association of sleep spindle activity and sleepiness in children with sleep-disordered breathing.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundChildhood generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), characterized by uncontrollable worry, is associated with long-term psychopathology risk, yet understanding of developmental trajectories is limited. Despite common complaints about sleep, 'macro' sleep abnormalities have not been identified. Emerging findings suggest micro-architectural features of sleep, including sleep spindles, differentiate various psychiatric populations. The current study investigated sleep spindle density during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep among youth with GAD and healthy controls, including relationships with anxiety, worry, global functioning, and subjective sleep quality.
methods58 pre-pubertal children, n = 26 with GAD and n = 32 matched healthy controls, aged 7-11 years (M = 8.86, SD=1.47), completed diagnostic assessments and a week of actigraphy monitoring prior to a night of polysomnography (PSG) either at home or in a sleep laboratory. NREM spindle activity was detected in frontal and central regions.
resultsSleep spindle activity did not differ based on diagnostic group or sex. Sleep spindles were unassociated with anxiety and sleep quality but showed a significant positive association with worry in all youth. Among youth with GAD, global functioning was negatively associated with spindle density in frontal regions during NREM stage 3. Spindle density was significantly greater during in-lab compared to at-home PSG. LIMITATIONS: The small sample size and reliance on only one night of PSG necessitate additional studies.
conclusionsThe identified link between spindle activity and worry in pre-pubertal children highlights a need for investigations on transdiagnostic features of child psychopathology rather than specific disorders. Longitudinal studies are needed to explore spindle characteristics and affective risk across development.
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