A strict bedtime, family dinners and set playtime may boost children’s brain development and emotional resilience – particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, research suggests.

Sleep is known to be vital for growing brains and youngsters with regular routines typically spend more time asleep.

Not getting enough shut-eye can drive changes in brain structure during their formative years, a US study found.

Scans showed children who slept less tended to have thinner regions of the brain associated with language, controlling behaviour, sensory perception, and smaller volume of an area linked to emotion processing.

Study leader Professor Emily Merz, an expert in cognitive neuroscience and psychology at Colorado State University, said: “Sleep insufficiency may be associated with not only the brain’s structure but also the function of emotion processing brain circuits in children.

“This may possibly explain why reduced sleep leads to greater susceptibility to negative emotions.

“Although most developmental studies of sleep have focused on teens, this research underscores the need to assess and support children’s sleep health prior to adolescence.”

The NHS advises that children aged six to 12 years old need between nine and 12 hours of sleep each night.

Researchers surveyed the parents of 94 children aged between five and nine to collect data on their routines and sleep duration.

Questions included whether they did the same thing each morning, whether they had set “family time”, and whether they read stories together frequently.

MRI scans were then taken to examine their brain structure.

Some 30 percent of children in the study came from families whose incomes fell below the US poverty line.

Children from lower income backgrounds or whose parents had lower levels of education tended to sleep less than those from more affluent backgrounds, the study found.

However, those who had more regular routines were less negatively affected.

Dr Merz said the findings, published in the journal Brain and Behaviour, suggested “socioeconomic disadvantage interferes with the consistency of family routines – potentially increasing children’s stress and reducing their sleep time, which then impacts brain development”.

She added: “Childhood is a sensitive period in development when environmental experiences can have powerful and lasting influences on the brain.

“Our work – and work done by other labs – suggests that antipoverty policies that support families have the potential to change the trajectory of children’s lives.”

Separate research, due to be presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado, this week, explored how sleep deprivation in teenagers affects brain function.

Teens scored higher on concentration tests after sleeping for eight hours and not using their smartphones before bed, compared with sleeping for six hours and using phones before bed, the study from North Carolina Academy of Science found.