Logo image
Back
Slow Wave Sleep and Emotion Regulation in Adolescents With Depressive Symptoms: An Experimental Pilot Study
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Slow Wave Sleep and Emotion Regulation in Adolescents With Depressive Symptoms: An Experimental Pilot Study

João Paulo Lima Santos, Mahi Pachgade and Adriane M. Soehner
Journal of sleep research, v 34(6), e70038
Dec 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.70038
PMID: 40070075
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.70038View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Sleep and Mental Health
Emotion regulation deficits are a hallmark of adolescent depression, and sleep greatly impacts emotion regulation. Initial data indicate acute mood benefits of slow‐wave sleep deprivation (SWSD) in depressed adults, but it is unclear whether this may occur through improvement in emotion regulation. In addition, this has not been tested experimentally in adolescent depression. In this pilot study, we tested the effect of SWSD on emotion regulation in adolescents with elevated depressive symptoms. Fifteen adolescents (mean age [SD] = 17.47 [1.55] years, 12 female) completed three consecutive nights of polysomnographic sleep recording: Baseline, SWSD, and Recovery. Auditory stimulation (sounds of varying pitch, duration, and volume) suppressed slow‐wave sleep (SWS) during SWSD. After Baseline and SWSD nights, the Emotional Go/No‐Go task was administered the next day as a behavioural assessment of cognitive control, emotion discrimination, and emotion regulation outcomes. False Discovery Rate was used to account for multiple comparison correction. We found that, at Baseline, longer SWS duration was associated with poorer emotion discrimination (β = −0.44, p = 0.012, Q = 0.036). There was no association between other sleep stages and emotion regulation. While Emotional Go/No‐Go outcomes did not significantly differ between Baseline and SWSD nights, greater attenuation in SWS significantly correlated with improvement in cognitive control (β = 0.61, p = 0.021, Q = 0.038), emotion discrimination (β = −0.44, p = 0.025, Q = 0.038), and emotion regulation (β = 0.62, p = 0.049, Q = 0.049) between nights. Findings from this pilot study tie elevated SWS to impaired emotion regulation in adolescents with depressive symptoms and suggest that targeted deprivation of SWS may improve emotion regulation in depressed adolescents with elevated SWS.

Metrics

1 Record Views
2 citations in Web of Science

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

Source: SDGs in the Output

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Clinical Neurology
Neurosciences
Logo image