Age-related decline in sleep-dependent memory consolidation

描述（由申请人提供）：我在加州大学伯克利分校读研究生和做博士后初期的研究兴趣之一是研究小脑在运动和认知中的功能作用。在博士后nssa期间，我专注于一个跨越这两个领域的任务，序列学习，在小脑损伤患者中受损。为了理解这种缺陷，我开始了一项新的研究，研究睡眠在学习和巩固这些任务中的作用。睡眠有利于顺序学习：在一个简单的、明确的顺序任务中，间隔12小时的睡眠比间隔12小时不睡觉更能提高表现。我最近的研究表明，这种好处仅限于涉及海马体的任务。此外，我发现睡眠对海马依赖序列学习任务的表现的好处并不存在于老年人（45-80岁）中。这一结果导致了一些问题，这些问题将在拟议的研究中进行研究。我将使用多导睡眠描记术检查睡眠依赖性巩固的缺乏是否由于睡眠基本阶段的数量或质量的减少。此外，我将研究老年人在睡眠依赖性巩固方面的缺陷是否可以推广到其他非运动、睡眠依赖性学习任务（例如，词对联想学习），以及睡眠依赖性学习是否也会随着年龄的增长而下降。拟议的培训和研究计划将有利于获得教师职位，使我可以继续研究睡眠在老年人学习中的作用，作为一个独立的研究者；我计划在加州大学伯克利分校进行初步的多导睡眠图研究，在那里我有导师在使用这项技术方面给我建议，并帮助解决任何出现的神经心理学、统计学或实验设计问题。这项研究的结果将有助于治疗与年龄有关的记忆衰退。预计这些实验将提供证据，证明睡眠结构是与年龄相关的学习和记忆衰退的基础。这样一来，治疗记忆力下降的方法就可以更有针对性：如果睡眠不足与睡眠数量或质量下降有关，那么增强睡眠的疗法可能会改善与年龄相关的记忆力下降。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of my research interests which I focused on as a graduate student and my initial years as a post- doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley is examining the functional role of the cerebellum in movement and cognition. Under a post-doctoral NRSA, I focused on a task that spans both of these domains, sequence learning, which is impaired in patients with cerebellar damage. To understand this impairment, I began what has become a new research line examining the role of sleep in learning and consolidation of such tasks. Sleep is beneficial to sequence learning: performance on a simple, explicit sequence task is improved following a 12 hour interval containing sleep more so than following a 12 hour interval without sleep. My recent research shows that this benefit is limited to tasks which engage the hippocampus. Moreover, I found that the benefit of sleep on performance of hippocampal-dependent sequence learning tasks is not present in older adults (45-80 years). This result leads to a number of questions which will be examined in the proposed research. I will examine whether the lack of sleep-dependent consolidation is due to decreased quantity or quality of essential stages of sleep using polysomnography. Additionally, I will examine whether the deficit in sleep-dependent consolidation in older adults is generalizable to other, non- motor, sleep-dependent learning tasks (e.g., word-pair association learning) and whether sleep- independent learning also declines with age. The proposed training and research plans will be beneficial for obtaining a faculty position in which I can continue to pursue studies of the role of sleep in learning in older adults as an independent investigator; I plan to conduct the initial polysomnography study while at UC Berkeley where I have mentors to advise me in the use of this technique and to aid with any neuropsychological, statistical or experimental design issues that arise. The results of this research will be beneficial for treating age-related memory decline. It is expected that these experiments will provide evidence that sleep architecture underlies age-related decline in learning and memory. In doing so, treatments for memory decline can be more appropriately targeted: if the lack of sleep benefit is related to decreased sleep quantity or quality, therapies which enhance sleep may improve age-related decreases in memory.