New light therapies - These glasses improve sleep and performance

How does an improved sleep behavior affect children??

Many parents of young children or adolescents are likely to face the following problems: Their child sleeps far too little and school is often lacking in attention, which is why the child's academic performance suffers. Researchers have now developed so-called light therapy goggles that can help improve sleep and even promote teenage learning and cognitive skills.

Researchers at Flinders University in Australia found in their recent research that newly invented light therapy glasses improve teenage sleep and promote learning and cognitive abilities. The physicians published the results of their study in the English-language journal "Journal of Adolescence".

The use of so-called light therapy glasses can improve the sleep and educational performance of children and adolescents. (Image: Robert Kneschke - fotolia)

Improvement of cognitive performance by light therapy glasses?

The newly invented glasses have been recently used in studies to demonstrate their usefulness in overcoming acute and chronic sleep problems in teenagers. These special light therapy glasses could have further effects on humans and lead to improved cognitive skills in adolescents and young adults without recognized sleep disorders, the researchers say. This in turn could help to improve the cognitive performance of those affected.

Study examines short-term memory and information processing

The so-called bright-light therapy was beneficial for the sleep and cognitive performance of adolescents with delayed sleep-wake-phase disorder who were treated in a child and adolescent sleep clinic, explain the experts. The current study builds on a previous study that increased the sleep of teenagers using light therapy glasses as part of a novel sleep intervention in high schools. The new research went one step further by also examining aspects of IQ testing, such as short-term memory and the speed of information processing.

Treatment is beneficial in many ways

It turned out that the treatment is beneficial in many ways. The sleep patterns of the participants improved, but also the cognitive performance increased, explains study author Dr. Cele Richardson of Flinders University. These effects proved to be very helpful for adolescents who participated in the study and suffered from serious sleep problems. The findings could be broader in the future, experts say.

Study had 60 adolescent subjects

The controlled study evaluated a so-called light therapy for the treatment of delayed sleep-wake-phase disorder in 60 young people between the ages of 13 and 24 years. Participants participated in light therapy for three weeks and were re-examined three months after treatment. Based on the results of the study, the researchers believe that similar intervention strategies, especially for those with late but not clinically delayed sleep timing, can be more widely used to improve cognitive performance. In particular, the speed of information processing is affected.

Chronic sleep disorder reduces cognitive performance

The findings also suggest that the relationship between sleep and cognitive performance changes in adolescents when a sleep disorder becomes chronic (known as delayed sleep-wake-phase disorder), the researchers explain. Adolescents with delayed sleep-wake-phase disorder also rated their performance in cognitive tasks significantly worse compared to those with normal sleeping experience. This could also be observed when the performance was in fact no worse. The observation may suggest that adolescents with sleep-wake-phase disorder have negative expectations regarding their performance as a result of poor sleep, the researchers speculate.

Further research is needed

Further research in this area is now considered a top priority as it is quite possible that the general learning ability of adolescents could benefit from similar sleep strategies, the researchers add. (As)