Decoupling Sleep and Brain Size in Childhood: An Investigation of Genetic Covariation in the Adolescent Brain...

Childhood sleep problems are common and among the most frequent and impairing comorbidities of childhood psychiatric disorders. In adults, sleep disturbances are heritable and show strong genetic associations with brain morphology; however, little is known about the genetic architecture of childhood sleep and potential etiological links between sleep, brain development, and pediatric-onset psychiatric symptoms.

Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (n _Phenotype = 4428 for discovery/replication, n _Genetics = 4728; age 9-10 years), we assessed phenotypic relationships, heritability, and genetic correlations between childhood sleep disturbances (insomnia, arousal, breathing, somnolence, hyperhidrosis, sleep-wake transitions), brain size (surface area, cortical thickness, volume), and dimensional psychopathology.

Sleep disturbances showed widespread positive associations with multiple domains of childhood psychopathology; however, only insomnia showed replicable associations with smaller brain surface area. Among the sleep disturbances assessed, only insomnia showed significant heritability (h ² _SNP = 0.15, p < .05) and showed substantial genetic correlations with externalizing and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptomatology (r s > 0.80, ps < .05). We found no evidence of genetic correlation between childhood insomnia and brain size. Furthermore, polygenic risk scores calculated from genome-wide association studies of adult insomnia and adult brain size did not predict childhood insomnia; instead, polygenic risk scores trained using attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder genome-wide association studies predicted decreased surface area at baseline as well as insomnia and externalizing symptoms longitudinally.

Findings demonstrate a distinct genetic architecture underlying childhood insomnia and brain size and suggest genetic overlap between childhood insomnia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptomatology. Additional research is needed to examine how genetic risk manifests in altered developmental trajectories and comorbid sleep/psychiatric symptoms across adolescence.