Sleep and positive feelings inprete children: pre-adolescents
Official title: Developmental Impacts of Sleep on Positive Valence Systems and Socioemotional Functioning during Pre-Adolescence
Funded at Montana State University - Bozeman · NIH-11370192 · Data updated 2026-11-12
Aims to understand how sleep patterns in 8–12 year-olds affect mood and motivation, using real-life sleep data, brain measures, and playful tasks.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Montana State University - Bozeman NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Bozeman, United States) |
| Project start | September 10, 2024 |
| Project end | June 30, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $637,910 |
| NIH project number | 5R01MH137263-03 |
| Project ID | NIH-11370192 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Children aged 8–12 who experience typical sleep patterns but may have social jetlag and related mood or behavioral concerns.
✕Less likely to help
Children without pronounced sleep disruption or mood concerns are less likely to directly benefit from the interventions studied.
What this research studies
This project follows kids aged 8–12 to see how weekday sleep loss and weekend catch-up sleep influence positive feelings and rewarding experiences. It combines at-home sleep tracking, diaries, brain activity measures, and tasks that look at how children respond to rewards and learn from them. The study has two parts: a long 1-year follow-up with 290 participants and an additional smaller experiment with 64 participants to test ideas more tightly. Findings could point to ways to prevent mood problems by improving sleep during this sensitive developmental window.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, the research could inform early sleep-targeted strategies to support healthy mood and reward processing in children.
How similar studies have gone: Previous work shows sleep patterns relate to mood and brain reward circuits; this project builds on that with detailed longitudinal data in pre-adolescents.
Where this research is happening
-
Montana State University - Bozeman
Bozeman, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Palmer, Cara a. — Montana State University - Bozeman
- Study coordinator: Palmer, Cara a.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.