Sleep Loss, Human Memory and Brain Plasticity across the Lifespan

描述（由申请人提供）：睡眠质量、效率和连续性都随着年龄的增长而下降。与这些睡眠障碍同时发生的是衰老的认知标志——记忆力逐渐退化，在以后的生活中获取和保留事实的能力下降。此外，现在人们普遍认为睡眠在学习、记忆和大脑可塑性方面起着至关重要的作用。然而，与年龄相关的记忆力下降的结果，至少部分是由于睡眠中断的可能性，仍然是一个谜，尚未被探索。如果正确的话，睡眠不足将代表一个重要的、但尚未被描述的、可治疗的认知衰老特征。将脑成像（fMRI）与认知测量相结合，我们将确定与年龄相关的睡眠损失和恢复对形成新人类记忆能力的影响。第一个系列的实验将确定年龄相关的睡眠不足和受损的记忆编码能力在医学上健康的老年人队列（65-85岁）之间的关系。这些神经和行为的变化将与年轻的健康受试者进行比较，这些受试者通过实验控制的睡眠模式与老年人的睡眠模式相匹配；将年龄的影响与睡眠不足分离开来。第二组实验将调查白天小睡是否对老年人和同样睡眠不足的年轻人的记忆编码有恢复作用；克服这些由睡眠不足引起的神经和行为影响。此外，这些研究将确定由不同睡眠阶段结构和不同持续时间组成的小睡是否在提高老年人和年轻人的学习能力方面具有或多或少的恢复作用。在这些研究项目中，我们还将确定高睡眠功能和低睡眠功能的老年人（即睡眠质量和睡眠数量）是否会像上述假设所预测的那样，表达不同的神经和行为记忆特征。项目描述：本提案的目标是描述衰老、睡眠缺失和记忆退化之间的关系，并进一步确定实际干预（白天小睡）可能提供的恢复益处。了解衰老过程中睡眠的逐渐减少如何影响人类记忆和大脑可塑性，具有深远的临床、社会和公共卫生意义。考虑到美国有超过7000万人患有睡眠障碍，并且在晚年明显增加，了解睡眠不足和学习困难之间的联系的重要性变得至关重要。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sleep quality, efficiency and continuity are all known to decrease in with age. Co-occurring with these sleep impairments is the cognitive hallmark of aging a progressive deterioration of memory, reducing the ability to acquire and retain facts in later life. Moreover, it is now widely acknowledged that sleep plays a critical role in learning, memory and brain plasticity. However, the possibility that age-related memory decline results, at least in part, from disrupted sleep, remains enigmatic and unexplored. If correct, inadequate sleep would represent an important, but as yet uncharacterized, feature of cognitive aging that is treatable. Combining brain imaging (fMRI) with cognitive measures, we will determine the impact of age-associated sleep loss, and recovery, on the ability to form new human memories. A first series of experiments will determine the relationship between age-related sleep deficits and impaired memory encoding ability in a cohort of medically healthy older adults (age 65-85). These neural and behavioral changes will be compared to young healthy subjects with experimentally manipulated sleep patterns matching those of the older adults; dissociating the effects of age from sleep loss. A second series of experiments will investigate whether daytime naps provide a restorative benefit to memory encoding in older adults, and similarly sleep deprived young adults; overcoming these neural and behavioral effects resulting from sleep loss. Furthermore, these studies will determine whether naps composed of different sleep-stage architectures and of varying durations are more or less recuperative in enhancement learning ability in older and young subjects. Across these programs of research, we will also determine whether high- and low-sleep functioning older adults (i.e. sleep quality and quantity), express differential neural and behavioral memory profiles, as would be predicted by the above hypothesis.Project Narrative: The goal of this proposal is to characterize the relationship between aging, sleep loss and memory deterioration, and further determine the recuperative benefits that a practical intervention (daytime naps) may provide. Understanding how the progressive loss of sleep in aging impacts human memory and brain plasticity has profound clinical, societal and public health implications. Considering that over 70 million people in the U.S. suffer from disordered sleep, which markedly increases in later life, the importance of understanding a link between inadequate sleep and learning difficulties becomes paramount.