Pathophysiology of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes in children

• Post-training sleep benefits the consolidation of declarative memories in children.
• Post-training sleep benefits for procedural memory remain debated in children.
• Sleep-dependent plasticity markers, cortical maturation and cognition are related.
• Pathophysiological sleep mechanisms subtend long-term plasticity in children.

Cognitive impairments are often associated with abnormal sleep activity in developmental disorders and pathologies of childhood. Besides, accumulated evidence indicates that post-training sleep benefits to the consolidation of recently learned information in healthy adults and children. Although sleep-dependent consolidation effects in children are clearly established for declarative memories, they remain more debated in the procedural memory domain. Nowadays, recent experimental data suggest close interactions between the development of sleep-dependent plasticity markers, cortical maturation and cognition in children. In the present review, we propose that studying sleep and memory consolidation processes in developmental disorders and acquired childhood pathologies can provide novel, enlightening clues to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms subtending the disruption of long-term cerebral plasticity processes eventually leading to cognitive and learning deficits in children.