Deep sleep could be a buffer against memory loss linked to Alzheimer’s disease

By Cara Murez HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, May 5, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Good sleep is an important part of well-being for many reasons, but new research suggests that deep sleep may even protect against memory loss linked to Alzheimer’s disease. .

“With some level of brain pathology, you’re not destined for cognitive symptoms or memory problems,” the study author said. Zsofia Zavecz, postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Human Sleep Science. “People need to be aware that despite some level of pathology, there are certain lifestyle factors that will help mitigate and lessen the effects.

“One of those factors is sleep, and more specifically, deep sleep,” Zavecz said in a university press release.

Researchers had previously found that a person’s decreasing amount of deep sleep could predict a faster rate of future beta-amyloid accumulation in the brain.

This idea of ​​cognitive reserve is a hot target for sleep researchers, the study’s lead author said. Matthew Walkerprofessor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley.

“If we think that sleep is so critical for memory, could sleep be one of those missing pieces in the explanatory puzzle that would tell us exactly why two people with the same amounts of vicious and severe amyloid pathology have a very different memory? Walker said in the statement.

Although being more educated, being physically active, and having a lot of social engagement can also make a person more resilient, some of them are hard to change.

“If the results confirmed the hypothesis, that would be exciting, because sleep is something we can change,” Walker said. “It’s a modifiable factor.”

The study included 62 healthy older adults undiagnosed with dementia from the Berkeley Aging Cohort Study.

They slept in a lab while researchers monitored their sleep waves with an electroencephalography (EEG) machine. The team then used positron emission tomography (PET) to measure the amount of beta-amyloid deposits in the participants’ brains. While half of the participants had large amounts of amyloid deposits, the other half had none.

Participants then performed a memory task of associating names with faces.

Those who had large amounts of beta-amyloid deposits in their brains and who also had deeper sleep performed better on the memory test than those who had the same amount of deposits and who slept less well. This was limited to the group with amyloid deposits. In the group without deposits, deep sleep did not improve memory.

After controlling for other factors, researchers still found the benefits of deep sleep. This suggests that deep sleep helps rescue memory function even in the face of brain pathology.

The results were published May 3 in the journal BMC Medicine.

Walker suggested that deep sleep could be like a lifesaving effort.