Lauren Hartstein
University of Arizona, AZ·Psychology·Early-career
Many young children struggle to fall asleep in the evening, and persistent sleep problems at this age are linked to worse behavior and health later on. Part of the explanation is the body's internal clock.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
pediatric sleep
circadian rhythms
melatonin
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Assess whether families of 5- to 6-year-olds with difficulty falling asleep can implement and accept two evening light-reduction strategies, using adherence measures and qualitative parent interviews after a two-week trial.
- Test the preliminary efficacy of short-wavelength-reducing smart lightbulbs in the home versus amber-tinted glasses versus clear sham glasses in advancing children's sleep timing, measured by wrist actigraphy.
- Measure whether evening light mitigation advances the circadian clock itself, using the dim-light melatonin onset from salivary melatonin sampled before and after the intervention.
- Explore whether individual differences in light sensitivity, assessed by pupillometry, predict how strongly a child's sleep and circadian timing respond to the light interventions.
More about the research
Light is the strongest signal that sets this clock, and light in the evening suppresses melatonin, the hormone that signals it is time to sleep, pushing the clock later and keeping children alert past bedtime. Evidence suggests that young children's clocks are unusually sensitive to light, responding even to dim evening light, yet almost no studies have tested whether reducing evening light actually helps them sleep better.
Why it matters
Children are exposed to more artificial and screen-based light in the evening than ever before, and bedtime resistance often begins in the preschool and early school years. If reducing evening light with ordinary tools like smart bulbs or tinted glasses proves feasible and shifts sleep earlier, it would give families and clinicians a low-cost, drug-free option, and would provide the groundwork for a larger trial of circadian interventions in early childhood.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nicole Russo-Ponsaran
Rush University, IL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine whether sleep health, including school-night sleep length, weekend oversleep, social jetlag and daytime sleepiness, differs between night owl and morning lark kindergartners in early- and late-start schools, using wrist actigraphy and questionnaires.
Talia Hitt
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test whether timing an oral glucose tolerance test to match each person's chronotype changes measured glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, in a randomized crossover study of late and non-late chronotype youth aged 17–23.
Brant Hasler
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Psychology·Early-career
Test how regular cannabis use and four weeks of abstinence change homeostatic sleep drive in 18-25-year-olds, using at-home sleep EEG headbands on nights with and without cannabis.
The school
University of Arizona: 36 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 487 research doctorates a year.
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