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Non-REM oscillations and emotion regulation are related to anxiety and depression symptoms in adolescents

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Hazal Arpaci¹ (harpaci@uiowa.edu), Amy Barry¹, Aditi Tripathy¹, Sarah Dickens¹, Intisar Becic¹, Bengi Baran¹; ¹University of Iowa

Non-REM (NREM) sleep oscillations such as spindles and slow oscillations are critical for cognitive and affective processes, and their disruption may contribute to symptoms in psychiatric disorders. This study examined whether NREM oscillations are altered in adolescents with anxiety disorders (ANX) compared to a matched comparison group (COMP), and whether these oscillations relate to symptom severity, emotion regulation, and resting-state functional connectivity of anxiety-relevant networks. Forty-three adolescents aged 9-13 years (M= 11.3; 17 ANX, 26 COMP) completed an overnight sleep EEG, a behavioral emotion regulation task, and a 7T resting-state fMRI scan. Validated algorithms detected NREM oscillations and characterized their morphology. Seed-to-voxel connectivity maps were generated using bilateral amygdala and thalamus seeds. Spindle duration was significantly reduced in the ANX group (tcluster=-26.62, pcorrected=.03), with no group differences in other oscillation measures. Across participants, reduced spindle duration correlated with higher parent-rated anxiety (tcluster=-63.28, pcorrected<.001), depression (tcluster=-91.8, pcorrected<.001), and internalizing symptoms (tcluster=-76.00, pcorrected=.002). Emotion regulation problems were also positively related to parent-reported anxiety (r=.46, p=.01), depression (r=.39, p=.01), and internalizing symptoms (r=.45, p=.004). Spindle duration was not related to emotion regulation. No group differences were observed in seed-to-voxel connectivity. Thalamic connectivity was not related to spindle activity, and amygdala connectivity was not related to symptoms. These findings reveal, for the first time, that adolescents with anxiety disorders have reduced spindle duration, correlating with severity of internalizing psychopathology. Ongoing work includes adding a medial prefrontal cortex seed analysis and collecting longitudinal EEG data to assess developmental trajectories of NREM oscillations and anxiety symptoms.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Development & aging