Sleep-dependent Memory Processing in Older Adults

描述(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平行下降。鉴于在健康的年轻人和动物模型中进行的大量研究表明，睡眠对记忆和其他认知过程有好处，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。这项应用的具体目标是探索与健康的年轻人相比，健康老年人的学习是否受益于睡眠。除了探索睡眠和醒来间隔后的记忆，我们还将调查记忆是否在睡眠中重构，以及观察到的变化的神经生理学基础。睡眠对陈述性学习和程序性学习的作用是独一无二的，每一种功能都与不同的睡眠阶段和生理标记相关联。因此，我们将分别探讨陈述性学习和程序性学习。在特定的目标1中，我们将检验老年人的程序记忆是否受益于睡眠。初步数据表明，这类任务的睡眠依赖记忆巩固能力随年龄增长而下降，我们预测这种缺陷与关键任务的碎片化有关 睡眠阶段。在特定的目标2中，我们将检验健康老年人的陈述性记忆是否受益于睡眠。初步数据表明，老年人在睡眠后的陈述性记忆表现比醒来时更好，这与年轻人的情况类似。我们将调查这一结果是否反映了记忆的重组，以及它是否是声明性存储域的一般属性。这项拟议的研究具有创新性，因为它将一个新的概念应用到认知衰老领域，将小说技术(多导睡眠图)应用于该领域，并试图将年龄相关性认知障碍的治疗和预防策略转移到睡眠目标上。此外，通过描述控制人群中睡眠-认知关系的范围，拟议的工作对于促进我们对其他疾病的认知缺陷的理解具有重要意义，在这些疾病中，睡眠障碍经常被观察到。

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.