AGE RELATED EFFECTS OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION ON CEREBRAL CORTICAL ACTIVITATION

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Sleep deprivation is common among the adult population, and the effects of sleep deprivation have been studied using cognitive performance and neuropsychological testing. It has been shown that cognitive performance declines in response to sleep deprivation. In order to determine why cognitive performance declines during sleep deprivation it must be addressed as to how neuronal firing and blood flow changes in the sleep deprived brain. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is one tool available to measure blood flow changes via the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent method (BOLD) in the sleep deprived brain and can be conducted during various cognitive performance tests. The overall goal of this project is to understand how the brain responds to sleep deprivation in younger and older adults using fMRI and cognitive testing. It is hypothesized that older adults will have more difficulty than younger adults in recruiting the prefrontal cortex in working memory-related and visual-spatial tasks after 36 hours of sleep deprivation, as measured by the fMRI. Results from these studies will provide insight into the mechanisms underlying how the brain responds to sleep deprivation, why cognitive performance changes in response to sleep deprivation, and how aging alters these mechanisms. The specific aims of this proposal are 1) To test the hypothesis that the sleep deprived brain compensates during certain cognitive tasks by increasing blood flow to the regions of the brain most involved in performing those tasks, 2) To test the hypothesis that in aging cognitive performance declines more rapidly in response to sleep deprivation, and 3) To test the hypothesis that in aging there will be a change in cortical Activation compared to younger subjects during a sleep-deprived state, resulting in less blood flow to certain brain regions during cognitive testing. 4) To localize cerebral cortical areas that are susceptible to Sleep Deprivation 5) to determine sleep recovery following 36 hours of sleep deprivation in young and older subjects.