ArticleSleep2021
Are age and sex effects on sleep slow waves only a matter of electroencephalogram amplitude?
Article in Sleep, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Biological Sex Differences in Sleep Spindles and Slow Wave Activity in Adults With and Without Insomnia.Journal of sleep research · 2026Pooled it
- Sex differences in electrical activity of the brain during sleep: a systematic review of electroencephalographic findings across the human lifespan.Biomedical engineering online · 2025Pooled it
- Article
- Classifying Sleep Slow Oscillations in Low Density EEG.Neuroinformatics · 2026Article
- Aging disrupts the temporal organization of slow oscillations beyond density reduction.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Impaired slow-wave sleep accounts for brain aging-related increases in anxiety.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Nightly variations in sleep quality and next-day cognitive performance: an in-home study in healthy older adults.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Article
- The irreplaceable role of sleep in building long-term memories: offline integration of free cortical units and its possible implication in autism.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Sleep State Influences Early Sound Encoding at Cortical But Not Subcortical Levels.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- Partial normalization of hippocampal oscillatory activity during sleep in TgF344-AD rats coincides with increased cholinergic synapses at early-plaque stage of Alzheimer's disease.Acta neuropathologica communications · 2025Article
- Unraveling the neurophysiological correlates of phase-specific enhancement of motor memory consolidation via slow-wave closed-loop targeted memory reactivation.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Scalp and hippocampal sleep correlates of memory function in drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy.Sleep · 2024Article
- The Interactive Role of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Episodic Memory in Older Adults.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023Review
- Sleep slow waves' negative-to-positive-phase transition: a marker of cognitive and apneic status in aging.Sleep · 2023Article
- Frontal grey matter microstructure is associated with sleep slow waves characteristics in late midlife.Sleep · 2022Article
- Article
- Sleep EEG-Based Approach to Detect Mild Cognitive Impairment.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aging is associated with reduced slow wave (SW) density (number SW/min in nonrapid-eye movement sleep) and amplitude. It has been proposed that an age-related decrease in SW density may be due to a reduction in electroencephalogram (EEG) amplitude instead of a decline in the capacity to generate SW. Here, we propose a data-driven approach to adapt SW amplitude criteria to age and sex. We predicted that the adapted criteria would reduce age and sex differences in SW density and SW characteristics but would not abolish them. A total of 284 healthy younger and older adults participated in one night of sleep EEG recording. We defined age- and sex-adapted SW criteria in a first cohort of younger (n = 97) and older (n = 110) individuals using a signal-to-noise ratio approach. We then used these age- and sex-specific criteria in an independent second cohort (n = 77, 38 younger and 39 older adults) to evaluate age and sex differences on SW density and SW characteristics. After adapting SW amplitude criteria, we showed maintenance of an age-related difference for SW density whereas the sex-related difference vanished. Indeed, older adults produced less SW compared with younger adults. Specifically, the adapted SW amplitude criteria increased the probability of occurrence of low amplitude SW (<80 µV) for older men especially. Our results thereby confirm an age-related decline in SW generation rather than an artifact in the detection amplitude criteria. As for the SW characteristics, the age- and sex-adapted criteria display reproducible effects across the two independent cohorts suggesting a more reliable inventory of the SW.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.