Memory loss due to lack of sleep may be reversible

Published on Thursday 22 October 2009 22:15

INSOMNIACS worried that the condition may affect their memory have good news to wake up to. Scientists claim that the loss of memory from a lack of sleep may be reversible.

The research, published in the science journal Nature, lays the groundwork for the development of new treatments to improve the effects of sleep deprivation, the scientists said.

Professor Ted Abel and colleagues found that sleep deprivation in mice affected a key molecular pathway known as the hippocampus, a region of the brain important for memory and learning.

Prof Abel and his team at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, found that by giving the mice an inhibitor of the enzyme PDE4, the decrease in concentration of the molecule cAMP was also reversed.

Prof Abel said: "These findings demonstrate that brief sleep deprivation disrupts hippocampal function by interfering with cAMP signalling through increased PDE4 activity.

He said a "major challenge" in the field of sleep research was to determine how "sleep disruptions associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders, ageing and everyday living affect cognitive function".

He added that the study's findings "lay the groundwork for further analysis of the functional biochemistry of sleep deprivation and the development of new therapeutics to ameliorate the effect of sleep deprivation".