Age-related changes in sleep may impact cognition

Reuters Health - 17/11/2020 - Sleep changes as we age, and some of those changes may impact cognition, researchers report in two new studies published in Nature Human Behaviour. A reanalysis of data on more than one million people in three countries found that certain characteristics of sleep - duration, insomnia and daytime sleepiness - evolve as people age. A second study, which looked at whole-night electroencephalography from nearly 4,000 older adults, found that certain metrics of sleep macro- and micro-architecture are predictive of cognitive performance. You can look at sleep as a window on brain activity, said the lead author of the brain-wave study, Shaun Purcell, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Sleep is a good time to look at brain activity, free from external stimuli," Purcell said. "We found that it was not total amount of sleep and not even how people felt in the morning ...

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Posted on 17 November, 202026 November, 2020