Sleep-dependent Memory Processing in Older Adults

描述（由申请人提供）：健康的衰老伴随着认知能力的下降以及睡眠数量和质量的下降。鉴于对健康年轻人和动物模型的大量研究表明睡眠对记忆和其他认知过程有益，我们的首要目标是了解睡眠的变化是否可以解释健康衰老过程中认知能力的变化。本应用程序的具体目的是探讨与健康的年轻人相比，健康的老年人的睡眠是否有利于学习。除了在睡眠和清醒间隔后探查记忆外，我们还将研究记忆是否在睡眠期间被重构以及观察到的变化的神经生理学基础。睡眠对陈述性和程序性学习的作用是独特的，它们都与不同的睡眠阶段和生理标志有关。因此，我们将分别探讨陈述性学习和程序性学习。在具体目标1中，我们将研究睡眠是否有利于老年人的程序性记忆。初步数据表明，对于这类任务，依赖睡眠的记忆巩固会随着年龄的增长而下降，我们预测这种缺陷与关键的碎片化有关

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Healthy aging is accompanied by decreased cognitive abilities and a parallel decline in sleep quantity and quality. Given a wealth of researc in healthy young adults and animal models illustrating a benefit of sleep on memory and other cognitive processes, our overarching objective is to understand whether changes in sleep may account for changes in cognitive abilities in healthy aging. The specific objective of this application is to probe whether learning is benefitted by sleep in healthy older adults as compared to healthy young adults. In addition to probing memory following intervals of sleep and wake, we will investigate whether the memories were restructured over sleep and the neurophysiological underpinnings of observed changes. Sleep's function on declarative and procedural learning is unique, each being associated with distinct sleep stages and physiological markers. Therefore, we will separately probe declarative and procedural learning. In Specific Aim 1 we will examine whether procedural memories are benefitted by sleep in older adults. Preliminary data suggests an age-related decline in sleep-dependent memory consolidation for such tasks, a deficit we predict is associated with fragmentation of the critical sleep stage. In Specific Aim 2 we will examine whether declarative memories are benefitted by sleep in healthy older adults. Preliminary data suggest that declarative memory performance of older adults is greater following sleep relative to wake, similar to young adults. We will probe whether this result reflects a reorganization of the memory and whether it is a general property of the declarative memory domain. The proposed research is innovative as it applies a novel concept to the field of cognitive aging, utilizes novels techniques (polysomnography) for this field, and seeks to shift the treatment and preventive strategies for age-related cognitive deficit to sleep targets. Moreover, the proposed work is significant in advancing our understanding of cognitive deficits in other diseases in which sleep disturbances are frequently observed by describing the scope of the sleep-cognition relationship in the control population.