The role of poor sleep in Alzheimer's and what it could change about the way we diagnose and possibly prevent the disease
The role that amyloid plaque plays in Alzheimer’s disease is well-known, but here is a paradox that has confounded scientists for decades. You would think that Alzheimer’s patients would show large accumulations of amyloid plaque in the area of the brain responsible for long-term memory storage—the hippocampus. But that’s not true. In fact, Alzheimer’s patients show the greatest amount of amyloid accumulation in the mid-region of their frontal lobe.
Because our brain does its heavy memory lifting when we are asleep, this means that when we learn new information and then are given a chance to “sleep on it,” our recall is better. For instance, onehad a group of older adults memorize a string of word pairs like tree-chair or dog-pencil. Then they were allowed a full night’s sleep and their memory for these word pairs was tested.
When we get good quality sleep, our brain acts like a steel trap for our memories. But when we are sleep-deprived, our brain acts like a sieve. Important information and memories never make it to long-term storage. They slip through the cracks and are lost forever. This is the case for people of any age, but especially older adults. As a result, what on the surface looks like age-related dementia may in fact really be sleep-deprived dementia.
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