Table_1_Simulation of the Ontogeny of Social Jet Lag: A Shift in Just One of the Parameters of a Model of Sleep-Wake Regulating Process Accounts for the Delay of Sleep Phase Across Adolescence.XLSX

The term “social jet lag” was introduced for defining the conflict between social and biological clocks due to the general practice of shifting weekday risetime on early morning hours. The phase delay of the sleep-wake cycle during adolescence is one of the most remarkable features of the ontogenesis of sleep that is incompatible with early school start times. It was previously proposed that the process of accumulation of sleep pressure during wakefulness is slowing down in post-pubertal teens to allow them to stay awake for a longer period of time thus causing the delay of their bedtime. In order to examine this proposition, we traced the ontogeny of social jet lag using sleep times reported for 160 samples of study participants of different ages as an input to a model of sleep-wake regulatory process. The simulations suggested that a gradual change in just one of the model’s parameters, the time constant of wakefulness phase of the sleep-wake regulatory process, might explain the association of the transition between childhood and adulthood with the prolongation of time staying awake, delay of sleep time, and reduction of sleep duration. We concluded that the implication of the sleep-wake regulating model would be of help for understanding precisely how social jet lag varies with age and what are the chronophysiological causes of this variation.

“社交时差（social jet lag）”这一术语被提出，用于界定因普遍在工作日清晨提前起床而引发的社会节律与生物节律之间的冲突。青春期内睡眠-觉醒周期的相位延迟，是睡眠个体发育过程中最显著的特征之一，且与过早的学校上课时间不相适配。此前有研究提出，青春期后青少年在觉醒期间睡眠压力的累积过程会放缓，使其能够维持更长时间的觉醒状态，进而导致就寝时间推迟。为验证这一假说，我们以160名不同年龄研究参与者报告的睡眠时长作为睡眠-觉醒调节过程模型的输入，追踪了社交时差的个体发育轨迹。模拟结果显示，仅对该模型中睡眠-觉醒调节过程觉醒阶段的时间常数这一项参数进行渐进式调整，便可解释童年与成年过渡期与觉醒时长延长、就寝时间延迟及睡眠时长缩短之间的关联。我们认为，应用睡眠-觉醒调节模型将有助于精准理解社交时差如何随年龄变化，以及该变化背后的时辰生理学成因。