Exercising the sleepy brain: protecting memories from the effects of sleep deprivation

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Motivation: More than one third of adult Canadians are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis. These numbers are much worse among children and adolescents, for whom the effects of sleep loss have shown to have long-term consequences, negatively affecting their cognitive development and academic performance. Insufficient sleep costs Canadians 1.35% of the GDP ($21.4 billions) annually. Sleep insufficiency is associated with loss of work productivity and increases in traffic and work-related accidents, medical errors, and cognitive impairment. Sleep is essential to maintain neuroplasticity and cognition, and memory is one of the aspects of cognition most affected by sleep loss. Finding strategies to mitigate the impact of sleep insufficiency on neuroplasticity and memory is important. Animal studies demonstrate that exercise can protect memory and neuroplasticity from the effect of sleep deprivation. Whether exercise can also protect human memory is unknown. Objectives: The long-term objective of the research program presented in this application is to determine whether exercise can protect memory processing against the effects of sleep deprivation and whether the protective effect is mediated by neuroplasticity mechanisms. We propose three projects with three short-term objectives to determine whether: Project 1: individuals with a high cardio-respiratory fitness level are less susceptible to the effects of sleep deprivation on memory and the protective effect is associated with the capacity to activate brain networks during memory encoding; Project 2: a single bout of exercise performed before memory encoding promotes neuroplasticity changes that protect memory against sleep deprivation; Project 3: eight weeks of exercise training improve the function and structure of brain networks involved in memory processing, increasing the capacity to process memories under the effects of sleep deprivation. Impact: This research program will provide ground-breaking information to develop interventions to mitigate the deleterious effects of sleep loss on memory. Besides improving sleep quality, which could contribute to preserve cognitive function in individuals with sleep disorders, sessions of exercise strategically implemented could preserve memory function in sleep-restricted individuals or in people with shift works. The projects will also provide much needed information to understand how exercise impacts neuroplasticity processes underlying memory in the sleep deprived human brain. Identifying biomarkers of neuroplasticity susceptible to sleep loss and understanding how they respond to exercise will provide invaluable information to develop more targeted strategies to protect the structures and functions of the brain most affected by the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation.