Biological Basis for Less Sleep with Age

Posted on Oct. 13, 2014, 6 a.m. in Sleep Brain and Mental Performance

By the time many men and women are in their 70s, they may be sleeping an hour and a half less than they did when they were in their 20s. Upon waking, they often are not well rested, and are tired during the day. Clifford Saper, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Massachusetts, USA), and colleagues identified in a lab animal model that a specific cluster of neurons associated with regulating sleep patterns – the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus, may slowly die off as you get older; as a result, “profound insomnia” may develop. The researchers then assessed View news source…