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Do Older Adults Need Sleep? A Review of Neuroimaging, Sleep, and Aging Studies

  • Sleep and Neurodegenerative Disorders (Y-E Ju, Section Editor)
  • Published:
Current Sleep Medicine Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Sleep habits, sleep physiology, and sleep disorders change with increasing age. However, there is a longstanding debate regarding whether older adults need sleep to maintain health and daily functioning (reduced-sleep-need view). An alternative possibility is that aging reduces the ability to obtain restorative sleep (reduced-sleep-ability view). Prior research using behavioral and polysomnography outcomes has not definitively disentangled the reduced-sleep-need and reduced-sleep-ability views. Therefore, this review examines the neuroimaging literature to determine whether age-related changes in sleep cause—or are caused by—age-related changes in brain structure, function, and pathology.

Recent Findings

In middle-aged and older adults, poorer sleep quality, greater nighttime hypoxia, and shorter sleep duration related to cortical thinning in frontal regions implicated in slow-wave generation, in frontoparietal networks implicated in cognitive control, and in hippocampal regions implicated in encoding and memory consolidation. Furthermore, poor sleep quality was associated with higher amyloid burden and decreased connectivity in the default mode network, a network that is disrupted in the pathway to Alzheimer’s disease.

Summary

Older adults need sleep, but cortical thinning and amyloidal deposition with advancing age may weaken the brain’s ability to produce restorative sleep. Therefore, sleep in older adults may not always support identical functions for physical, mental, and cognitive health as in young adults.

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Acknowledgments

The author was supported by NIH AG053161 and is grateful to Alex Reynolds, Annie Ginty, and Melanie Sekeres for their helpful discussions of this paper.

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  1. Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Baylor University, One Bear Place 97334, Waco, TX, 76798, USA

    Michael K. Scullin

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Scullin, M.K. Do Older Adults Need Sleep? A Review of Neuroimaging, Sleep, and Aging Studies. Curr Sleep Medicine Rep 3, 204–214 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40675-017-0086-z

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