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. 2024 Sep 12:6:100124.
doi: 10.1016/j.nbas.2024.100124. eCollection 2024.

Sleep-dependent memory consolidation in young and aged brains

Deependra Kumar  1 , Masashi Yanagisawa  1 , Hiromasa Funato  1
Affiliations

Sleep-dependent memory consolidation in young and aged brains

Deependra Kumar et al. Aging Brain. .

Abstract

Young children and aged individuals are more prone to memory loss than young adults. One probable reason is insufficient sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Sleep timing and sleep-stage duration differ between children and aged individuals compared to adults. Frequent daytime napping and fragmented sleep architecture are common in children and older individuals. Moreover, sleep-dependent oscillations that play crucial roles in long-term memory storage differ among age groups. Notably, the frontal cortex, which is important for long-term memory storage undergoes major structural changes in children and aged subjects. The similarities in sleep dynamics between children and aged subjects suggest that a deficit in sleep-dependent consolidation contributes to memory loss in both age groups.

Keywords: Aging; Memory; Sleep.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Low memory retention in young and aged adult brains, compared with younger adult brains (a). Young and older adult brains show greater sleep fragmentation (b), and decreased stability of sleep-dependent oscillations (c) than young adult brains. Together, these features may affect hippocampal memory reactivation and transfer to long-term storage in the cortex (d).
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