The role of sleep in brain health
Summary: A new study shows how sleep duration affects brain health, particularly in relation to the risks of stroke and dementia.
Analyzing the brain images of nearly 40,000 middle-aged participants, this study showed that short and long sleep was associated with negative changes in brain structure.
Changes include the presence and volume of white matter (WMH) and reduced fractional anisotropy, indicators of brain aging and risk of dementia. This research emphasizes sleep as a key factor in maintaining brain health and highlights middle age as a critical period for regulating sleep habits.
Key facts:
Inadequate sleep, either too little or too much, is associated with increased WMH presence, greater WMH volume, and less fractional anisotropy.
These brain changes are associated with higher risks of stroke and dementia. This study emphasizes the importance of optimal sleep (7 to 9 hours) for brain health in middle-aged people.
A recent study shows that sleeping too much or too little is linked to changes in the brain that increase the risk of stroke and dementia later in life.
This research was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Conditions like stroke or dementia are the end result of a long process that ends tragically, say experts at the Falcon Laboratory at Yale School of Medicine and author of the study. We want to learn how to prevent these processes before they happen.
Long sleep (on average more than 9 hours per night) was associated with lower fractional anisotropy and with greater WMH volume, but not with the risk of WMH presence.
In one of the largest neuroimaging studies of its kind to date, the Yale team examined brain images of nearly 40,000 healthy, middle-aged participants to assess how sleep habits might affect two measures of brain health: white matter density (WMH); ) that lesions on the brain indicate brain aging and fractional anisotropy, which measures the uniformity of water diffusion along nerve axons. Greater WMH, greater WMH, and lower fractional anisotropy are associated with increased risk of stroke and dementia.
The researchers found that compared with optimal sleep (7–9 hours per night), participants with short sleep had a higher risk of WMH, greater WMH volume where WMH was present, and less fractional anisotropy. Long sleep (on average more than 9 hours per night) was associated with lower fractional anisotropy and with greater WMH volume, but not with the risk of WMH presence.
“These findings add to the growing body of evidence that sleep is a cornerstone of brain health,” Tuzzo says. It also provides evidence to help understand how sleep and sleep duration can be a modifiable risk factor for future brain health.
Researchers say the study highlights midlife as an important time to adjust sleep habits to support brain health.
According to Tozo, “Sleep is becoming a hot topic. We hope that this and other studies can provide insight into how we can modify patients’ sleep to improve brain health in the years to come.
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Taken from the channel of the Headquarters for the Development of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
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This post is written by Par3060