• Posted June 13, 2025

Lack Of Sleep Alters Teens' Brains, Potentially Promoting Behavior Issues

FRIDAY, June 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Brain changes in sleepless teens could make them more likely to be impulsive and aggressive, a new study says.

Teenagers with less sleep had lower connectivity between the parts of the brain that play a critical role in decision making, self-reflection and information processing, researchers reported June 13 in the journal Brain and Behavior.

Problems in these parts of the brain are also linked to mental illnesses like depression, ADHD and schizophrenia, researchers said.

“Sleep isn’t just good for children. It helps keep their mental health intact and helps them regulate their emotions,” senior researcher Assaf Oshri, director of the University of Georgia Center for Developmental Science, said in a news release.

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 2,800 kids whose sleep patterns were tracked using Fitbit wrist devices for at last two weeks on average. The kids also underwent MRI brain scans and psychological testing.

Results showed that short sleep dramatically affected the kids’ default mode network, a network of brain regions that tend to be active when a person is at rest and not focused on their external environment.

A lack of sleep caused the different regions of the default mode network to become less connected, researchers found.

These kids also were more likely to have behavior problems like aggression, inattention and hyperactivity, results show.

“The paper shows that sleep duration and sleep efficiency are linked to distinct patterns of brain network connectivity that are predictive of problem behaviors,” Oshri said.

Boys, older children and kids from racial minorities tended to have shorter sleep, as well as more behavior problems, the study found.

The default mode network plays a major role in introspection and daydreaming, according to Harvard Medical School. When the network is active, people become more self-connected and imaginative, able to link ideas and better understand the minds of other people.

“Adolescence is an extremely critical period for brain development, and sleep is critical for brain development,” lead researcher Linhao Zhang, a recent doctoral graduate of the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said in a news release. “But many adolescents don’t get enough quality sleep at night.”

More information

Psychology Today has more on the default mode network.

SOURCES: University of Georgia, news release, June 9, 2025; Brain and Behavior, June 13, 2025; Harvard Medical School, May 4, 2017