REM Sleep Abnormalities in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Children with autism lose a small but steady slice of REM sleep, a measurable clue you can add to your sleep assessment toolkit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ma et al. (2026) wired kids with autism to an overnight sleep lab. They tracked eye-movement sleep, called REM, minute by minute.
The team compared each child to a typically developing kid of the same age and sex.
What they found
Kids with autism got less REM sleep. It took them longer to enter the first REM cycle and the cycles were shorter.
The differences were small but consistent across the group.
How this fits with other research
Ballester et al. (2019) saw the same poor sleep pattern in adults with autism plus intellectual disability. Together the studies show sleep troubles start young and can last a lifetime.
Costa-Silva et al. (2025) asked parents about teeth grinding at night. That survey study found grinding often rides along with other sleep-wake hiccups. The lab data here give a deeper look at the REM clock behind those parent reports.
Daoust et al. (2008) found adults with autism recall fewer dreams. Less REM time in kids may explain why dream reports stay thin later on.
Why it matters
If a child you serve wakes often or looks tired, check REM timing. A short overnight sleep study can flag this treatable piece of the puzzle. Share the results with the pediatrician and, if needed, a sleep specialist. Better nights set the stage for better learning days.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sleep disturbances are common in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the sleep pattern changes including rapid eye movement (REM) sleep for ASD in pediatric populations remain unknown. Using polysomnography (PSG) data from the National Children's Hospital (NCH) Sleep Databank, we identified 193 children with ASD and matched them with 193 Non-ASD controls. We found children with ASD showed reduced REM sleep proportion (17.8% ± 6.4% vs. 19.1% ± 7.0%; p = 0.049) and duration (71.5 [49.5-91.0] min vs. 81.5 [52.5-98.0] min; p = 0.036), prolonged REM latency (134.5 [94.0-181.5] min vs. 116.0 [82.0-157.0] min; p = 0.009), and increased 1st REM duration (13.0 [7.0-19.0] min vs. 10.5 [6.0-16.5] min; p = 0.024) compared with Non-ASD peers. They also showed higher 1st REM proportion (18.8 [11.0-31.3] vs. 15.7 [8.3-25.4]; p = 0.003), particularly in children aged 3-5 years and 6-8 years. Using these REM features, the XGBoost machine learning model was achieved to be the best predictive performance. SHAP analysis further showed that decreased REM sleep duration, increased 1st REM proportion or duration, and prolonged REM latency were discriminative features for children with ASD. These findings suggest that REM sleep abnormalities are common in young patients with ASD but its contribution to the disease's severity and/or development needs to be explored further.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2026 · doi:10.1002/aur.70222