Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study was conducted by a research team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their research focused on three groups of mice: juvenile (21–28 days old), adolescent (42–49 days old), and adult (70–100 days old). Using an early study, scientists believed that early developmental sleep disruption interlinked with genetic issues to cause long-term impacts on the social behavior of mice. Researchers used this information to hypothesize about children: sleep disruption in early development can impact genetic characteristics in later adulthood.
A noninvasive piezoelectric system monitored the animals' movements and breathing during sleep to create a baseline understanding of the rodents' sleep patterns before depriving them of sleep. The recovery phase was the focus of analysis, seeing how and if the rodents regained the sleep lost. The researchers used various tests to conclude their findings, most notably novel object recognition, which assessed cognitive performances. Researchers used the mice's recognition of both new and old items to conclude that sleep, or lack thereof, impacts brain proteins.
The juvenile mice never made up lost sleep, showing apparent similarities to young children, suggesting that young brains are more sensitive to and recover less effectively from sleep loss, likely because of underdeveloped adaptive mechanisms. The brain proteins affected in the younger mice did not have the same consequences in the adults. In humans, the affected proteins have been tied to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), hinting that disrupted sleep during early and critical development can have impacts on adulthood.