Timely coupling of sleep spindles and slow waves linked to early amyloid-β burden and predicts memory decline.
prospective_cohort · Level II
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35638265.
- Also identified by DOI 10.7554/eLife.78191 and PMC identifier 9177143.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Sleep alteration is a hallmark of ageing and emerges as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). While the fine-tuned coalescence of sleep microstructure elements may influence age-related cognitive trajectories, its association with AD processes is not fully established. Here, we investigated whether the coupling of spindles and slow waves (SW) is associated with early amyloid-β (Aβ) brain burden, a hallmark of AD neuropathology, and cognitive change over 2 years in 100 healthy individuals in late-midlife (50-70 years; 68 women). We found that, in contrast to other sleep metrics, earlier occurrence of spindles on slow-depolarisation SW is associated with higher medial prefrontal cortex Aβ burden (p=0.014, r²<sub>β*</sub>=0.06) and is predictive of greater longitudinal memory decline in a large subsample (p=0.032, r²<sub>β*</sub>=0.07, N=66). These findings unravel early links between sleep, AD-related processes, and cognition and suggest that altered coupling of sleep microstructure elements, key to its mnesic function, contributes to poorer brain and cognitive trajectories in ageing.
Medical subject headings
- Alzheimer Disease
- Amyloid beta-Peptides