Why older people often sleep poorly
All content is checked by medical journalists.MunichThe "senile bed escape" is a household word. In fact, older people often sleep less - and significantly worse - than younger people. The reasons for this are apparently changes in a special control center in the brain.
“On average, 70-year-olds sleep an hour less than 20-year-olds,” explains study author Clifford Saper. You have trouble falling asleep and wake up very early in the morning. As part of a study, the neurologist and colleagues from the University of Toronto have now found out why sleep quality declines so much in old age - but also in Alzheimer's patients: apparently the sleep disorders are directly related to the loss of nerve cells in a special brain region, the intermediate nucleus . "The fewer neurons there were, the worse the sleep," says Saper.
Damaged sleep switch
The researchers had previously tracked down a corresponding area of the brain in the heads of rats. Animals in which many nerve cells had died in this area slept only half as much as animals with an intact "sleep switch". The nerve cells did not have an activating function, but an inhibitory one - and thus helped the brain to fall asleep. The fewer inhibitory neurons the animals had, the more problematic sleeping became.
For the new study, the scientists examined the brains of 45 deceased men and women, on average 89 years old, who had participated in the Rush Memory and Aging project. As part of this long-term study, the participants wore a motion detector for ten days every two years. It registered and saves all movements. This also made it possible to monitor the phases of sleep.
Few neurons, poor sleep
The autopsy showed that participants whose “intermediate nucleus” contained more than 6,000 neurons actually slept more than 50 percent of their total rest periods during their lifetime. Participants with fewer than 3,000 neurons in this area of the brain had actually been asleep for less than 40 percent of their rest periods before they died. The researchers found the same connection in deceased Alzheimer's patients.
“The loss of neurons in old age and in Alzheimer's disease appears to be a major cause of sleep problems,” says Saper. The researchers now hope that new therapeutic approaches for sleepless seniors and dementia patients can be developed on the basis of their findings. (cf)
Source: Andrew S. P. Lim et al: Sleep is related to neuron numbers in the ventrolateral preoptic / intermediate nucleus in older adults with and without Alzheimer's disease Brain first published online August 20, 2014 doi: 10.1093 / brain / awu222
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