NCT02685891

Brain Maturation and Sleep

Exploring Diurnal Changes in Markers of Cortical Plasticity Using Multimodal Imaging in Healthy Children, Adolescents and Adults

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 90 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University Children's Hospital, Zurich · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 8 Years – 30 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

In this study, the investigator evaluates whether there are age-specific diurnal changes in markers of cortical plasticity in children, adolescents and adults. The question will be investigated by the quantification of brain metabolites and structural brain volumes using magnet resonance imaging (MRI) and electrophysiological markers using sleep encephalography (sleep EEG). In a second step, it will be tested how these markers of cortical plasticity change depending on a modulation of sleep by applying tones during deep sleep.

Detailed description

Given that children and adolescents undergo entirely different maturational processes (children show an increase, adolescents a decrease in synapse density) larger diurnal changes in children are expected compared to adolescents concerning brain metabolites and structural markers. These cortical changes in synapse density are thought to be reflected in electrophysiological markers in the sleep EEG (children show a higher slow wave activity, adolescents a reduced slow wave activity). With the modulation of the deep (slow wave) sleep by playing short, low volume tones, the investigators want to test if there is a causal relationship between slow wave sleep and markers of cortical plasticity.

Conditions

• Healthy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Playing tones during deep sleep	Playing tones time locked to slow waves (Duration:50ms, volume: 50dB)
OTHER	sham condition	in the sham condition, no tones will be played

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-06-01
• Primary completion: 2025-12-01
• Completion: 2025-12-01
• First posted: 2016-02-19
• Last updated: 2024-01-30

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Switzerland