2024-01-08 16:30:00
Quality sleep improves your lifestyle, this is no longer in doubt. Conversely, disturbed or too short nights can harm your cognitive system in the long term. A recent study, conducted by the University of California, San Francisco, found links between disrupted and poor quality sleep and memory.
To do this, researchers analyzed the behavior of 526 people regarding their sleep, over a period of ten years. They looked, among other things using activity monitors worn by the participants, on the nights of the latter, aged from 30 (at the start of the study) to 40 years (at the end). Each of them also had to note, in a diary, the time at which he or she went to bed and woke up, and answer questions regarding the quality of his or her sleep.
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The data collected was used to determine whether the participants slept peacefully or not. Each subject was also subjected to various cognitive tests at the end of the study, notably focusing on executive functions, memory and fluency.
The study found that participants with the most restless and/or interrupted sleep were 2.5 times more likely to obtain poor results on tests carried out, particularly those on fluency in word use.
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But researchers at the University of California remain cautious regarding the conclusions of their work. “Our results indicate that it is the quality rather than the quantity of sleep that matters most for cognitive health in middle age,” explains Yue Leng, lead author of the study, but “the study does not prove that sleep quality is the cause of cognitive decline. It only shows an association,” she insists.
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Yue Leng and his colleagues nevertheless hope that their study will open the door to other research and thus shed new light on certain diseases that affect memory, such as Alzheimer’s. “Because signs of Alzheimer’s disease begin to accumulate in the brain decades before symptoms appear, understanding the link between sleep and cognition early in life is critical to understand the role of sleep problems as a risk factor for the disease,” concludes Yue Leng.
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