Age-related decline in sleep-dependent memory consolidation

描述(由申请人提供)：我的研究兴趣之一是研究小脑在运动和认知中的功能作用，这是我作为研究生和加州大学伯克利分校博士后研究员最初几年专注的研究方向之一。在一名博士后NRSA的指导下，我专注于一项跨越这两个领域的任务，序列学习，这在小脑损伤患者中是受损的。为了了解这种损害，我开始了一项新的研究，考察了睡眠在学习和巩固这类任务中的作用。睡眠对序列学习是有益的：在一个简单、明确的序列任务中，包含睡眠的12小时间隔比没有睡眠的12小时间隔更能提高性能。我最近的研究表明，这种益处仅限于与海马体相关的任务。此外，我发现睡眠对依赖于海马体的序列学习任务的表现的好处在老年人(45-80岁)中并不存在。这一结果导致了一些问题，这些问题将在拟议的研究中进行审查。我将使用多导睡眠图检查睡眠依赖巩固的缺乏是否由于睡眠基本阶段的数量或质量减少所致。此外，我将研究老年人睡眠依赖巩固方面的缺陷是否可推广到其他非运动、睡眠依赖学习任务(例如，单词对联想学习)，以及睡眠独立学习是否也随着年龄的增长而下降。拟议的培训和研究计划将有利于我获得教职员工的职位，在那里我可以作为独立调查员继续研究睡眠在老年人学习中的作用；我计划在加州大学伯克利分校进行初步的多导睡眠图研究，在那里我有导师建议我使用这项技术，并帮助解决出现的任何神经心理学、统计学或实验设计问题。本研究结果将有助于治疗增龄性记忆减退。预计这些实验将提供证据，证明睡眠结构是与年龄相关的学习和记忆下降的基础。通过这样做，针对记忆力下降的治疗可以更有针对性：如果睡眠益处的缺乏与睡眠数量或质量的下降有关，那么提高睡眠的治疗可能会改善与年龄相关的记忆力下降。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of my research interests which I focused on as a graduate student and my initial years as a post- doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley is examining the functional role of the cerebellum in movement and cognition. Under a post-doctoral NRSA, I focused on a task that spans both of these domains, sequence learning, which is impaired in patients with cerebellar damage. To understand this impairment, I began what has become a new research line examining the role of sleep in learning and consolidation of such tasks. Sleep is beneficial to sequence learning: performance on a simple, explicit sequence task is improved following a 12 hour interval containing sleep more so than following a 12 hour interval without sleep. My recent research shows that this benefit is limited to tasks which engage the hippocampus. Moreover, I found that the benefit of sleep on performance of hippocampal-dependent sequence learning tasks is not present in older adults (45-80 years). This result leads to a number of questions which will be examined in the proposed research. I will examine whether the lack of sleep-dependent consolidation is due to decreased quantity or quality of essential stages of sleep using polysomnography. Additionally, I will examine whether the deficit in sleep-dependent consolidation in older adults is generalizable to other, non- motor, sleep-dependent learning tasks (e.g., word-pair association learning) and whether sleep- independent learning also declines with age. The proposed training and research plans will be beneficial for obtaining a faculty position in which I can continue to pursue studies of the role of sleep in learning in older adults as an independent investigator; I plan to conduct the initial polysomnography study while at UC Berkeley where I have mentors to advise me in the use of this technique and to aid with any neuropsychological, statistical or experimental design issues that arise. The results of this research will be beneficial for treating age-related memory decline. It is expected that these experiments will provide evidence that sleep architecture underlies age-related decline in learning and memory. In doing so, treatments for memory decline can be more appropriately targeted: if the lack of sleep benefit is related to decreased sleep quantity or quality, therapies which enhance sleep may improve age-related decreases in memory.