A sleep brain-wave pattern was less common at older ages
The pattern appeared in 88% of children versus 44% of older adults in sleep recordings from people aged 7 to 70.
937 participants
Limit: Repeated measurements covered < 1 year, too short to track individual aging
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Researchers analyzed 937 recordings of brain electrical activity during sleep from people aged 7 to 70 in an observational study. They examined iota oscillations, a brain-wave pattern, during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The peaks appeared at all ages. They occupied narrow frequency bands in children and broad bands in older adults. People aged 20 to 30 could have either pattern.
Stronger iota activity was linked to longer REM sleep and later sleep cycles. In repeated measurements less than a year apart, peak properties remained stable. An analysis of a separate dataset of identical and nonidentical twins suggested a strong inherited component for all peak properties except the width of their frequency bands.
Why it matters
These sleep signals may help researchers investigate how sleep, inherited traits, development and aging interact.
Caveats
The observational findings do not establish causes, and whether narrow and broad peaks serve the same function remains unclear. This preprint has not been peer-reviewed.
- Iota oscillations
- Iota peak frequency
- Iota peak amplitude
- Iota peak bandwidth
- Iota peak prevalence
- Humans
The paper
REM Sleep Iota Oscillations Across the Lifespan
Paris Brain Institute
bioRxiv, Oct 20, 2026, Open access, CC BY, Preprint, not peer-reviewed
