Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MS in Neuroscience

Department

Communication Sciences and Disorders

First Advisor

Yan H Yu

Second Advisor

Monica Wagner

Third Advisor

Tyreek Jackson

Abstract

Sleep plays a crucial role in human development, particularly in early childhood. While its influence on brain function is well documented, the relationship between sleep and auditory processing in the developing brain remains underexplored. The present study aimed to investigate how sleep duration impacts cortical responses to music, focusing on children aged 5 to 10. Using a six-feature passive listening oddball paradigm, analysis was conducted on event-related potentials (ERPs) across six music conditions: intensity, location, pitch, rhythm, slide, and timbre. Participants were divided into two groups based on average sleep duration (more or less than 10 hours per night). ERP data revealed that children who slept more exhibited more positive amplitude responses in all six conditions. Additionally, the study explored the role of mismatch negativity (MMN), a pre-attentive auditory response, and found that sleep-related differences in MMN were not significant, despite trends of MMN observed. Hemispheric analysis indicated a greater right hemisphere dominance in children with less sleep, while also displaying a greater sleep related sensitivity to amplitude attenuation in the left hemisphere. These findings contribute new insights into the impact of sleep on auditory processing in children, suggesting that sleep may modulate brain responses across hemispheres, with greater ERP implications for understanding sleep as a confounding variable in cognitive studies and clinical research.

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