Sleep Stimulation in Older Adults Without Dementia

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In a small number of studies that we've conducted in other wonderful folks, and Westerberg, Leidenbauer, they've done some wonderful work in this area too, actually suggests the answer could be yes. And following this stimulation, not only as I said, can we boost and bootstrap that deep sleep in these healthy older adults, it also led to those older adults being able to save and retain significantly more information within their brain. The results are encouraging, but many more clinical trials with large numbers of patients are needed. It's going to take some years before we can even start to entertain that most precious and also potentially dangerous of all things that we call hope in this regard.

Previously, we learned sleep is necessary before learning to prepare the brain to learn effectively. But sleep is also needed after learning to cement new information in your brain. This discovery happened in 1924 when two German researchers pitted sleep and wake against each other to see which would win out in memory-savings benefit. Their findings suggested that time spent awake can be hazardous to new memories while time spent asleep has fixating benefits.

Researchers have also put REM sleep head-to-head with non-REM to see which is more effective at saving memories. When it comes to memory, it is deep non-REM that helps hit the save button on new memories. These results led Matt to conduct experiments where we causally enhance the memory using electrical or auditory brain stimulation methods, and as a result, boosting the next day retention of memories. Indeed, with some of these sleep-stimulating methods, researchers have been able to double the amount of memory-savings benefit from sleep.

The results of these studies have real pragmatic and clinical implications, including in the context of aging and dementia. It’s no secret our learning and memory abilities begin to decline as we get older, but it’s also been discovered that a physiological signature of aging is that your sleep gets worse, especially the amount of deep, non-REM sleep. Recent evidence indicates that these two processes aren’t simply co-occurring but significantly interrelated.

The potential silver lining of this is that sleep is something we may be able to do something about. Matt and other researchers are exploring the use of direct current brain stimulation to restore some healthy quality of deep sleep in older adults and those with dementia, thereby salvaging aspects of the learning and memory function. And the tentative answer so far is that this could work, although it will take some years before we can even start to entertain real hope in this regard.

Please note that Matt is not a medical doctor, and none of the content in this podcast should be considered medical advice in any way, shape, or form, nor prescriptive in any way.

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